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To: energyplay who wrote (59565)	1/27/2005 7:57:21 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Hewlett-Packard is a company founded on innovation . . . and fat government contracts. HP created their first hand calculator for NASA which paid for it's development. In typical sweetheart deal fashion, HP then was free to sell the calculator to the public without any further payment to NASA. This one deal put HP on the map. Dick Cheney and Halliburton's sweetheart contracts in Iraq are nothing new. The genius of the American system is to privatize profits while socializing costs, and then complain about the great expense of government with a straight face. Pharmaceutical firms do the same. The taxpayer pays for the discovery and development of drugs through the National Institutes of Health. The participating drug company then patents and sells the drug. Of course they must charge a very high price "to pay for the development of the drug" which in this case is zero. At least the NIH is finally starting to demand a tiny royalty on their discoveries to partially recover the taxpayer funds. Take your remaining list of firms: Intel, Apple, Sun, Adobe, Yahoo, Google. Genetech, Amgen. National Semiconductor. Xerox, Polaroid. Was it innovation or was it innovation and crime? I suggest that list of companies includes a number of firms whose good fortune is based as much on crime and graft as innovation. Andy Grove has said Intel would not exist today had it not been for timely protection by the government from foreign competition. Yes, "It's good to be the King" or at least to have a Monopoly by Royal Charter. A friend once suggested, "if something doesn't make sense, it's usually because you don't know the full story." .