Fareed Zakaria, GPS Podcast, 10-31-10:
"The semiconductor industry, for example would not exist, if not for the D.O.D.... The Internet, well Al Gore didn't invent it, but DARPA did. The computer industry, for years NASA was it's main client and kept it alive and growing.... GPS, that's powering the next wave of innovation on the web, mobile telephony, and that was also a defense department project. All the CEOs I've spoken to, especially those running technology companies say that government investment in research and development has been crucial to driving technological change."
Are these claims true? Do Americans all owe a debt of gratitude to the Department of Defense for all innovation since WW2? Does anyone here have any evidence to the contrary?
The DOD gets every nickle of it's funding from American business, entrepreneurs, and taxpayers. You can't possibly be trying to make a case that the DOD is more capable in Research and Development than the very Companies and creative hard working people they looted the money from
Even if we accept this as true, the question is not "did they invent it or not?"
For instance. If Farmer Jones has all his crops stolen by thieves, and the thieves take a few grains of the stolen corn and put it in farmer Jones birdhouse, the question is not "Did the thieves attract the cute little birds to come here", but "What price did we pay for all the goodies the thieves gave us?'
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
There are few innovations that are, at least partially, the result of government demand. But the number of innovations that emerged in this way are dwarfed by those that were introduced in order to serve the consumer, and such innovations only truly became useful once the free market got a hold of them (the government hoards such innovations in order to gain military advantages, usually). The Internet, for example, became useful only when the private sector started creating billions of websites that serve the needs of the market (porn, shopping, information, dating services, employment services, etc). The left makes this argument because it wants to show that government subsidization is somehow efficient. But as we've seen in Japan, for example, heavy government involvement in industry yields bubbles and inefficient firms that become entirely dependent on continuous government privileges. Also, I see no reason to believe that such innovations wouldn't have emerged naturally (people like to be wealthy, after all). Innovation peaked when the government intrusion was at its global minimum (industrial revolution to early 20th century).
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
Central to this argument is the notion that certain technological advances will simply not occur without government funding, presumably of course because a great deal of investment is required.
In turn, It seems to me, two reasons for this belief are commonly held: (1) The belief that the private owners of capital cannot be counted on to amass the large amount of capital necessary to undertake the required research and development; and/or (2) The belief that entrepreneurs---who possess sufficient capital for successful R&D---simply aren't smart enough to see the potential benefits of the technologies in question, and therefore will fail to risk their capital by investing in the required research and development.
To believe the first reason, one must also believe both that: (a) individuals in the free market are unable to amass sufficiently large amounts of capital for such R&D; and (b) short of amassing the required capital by themselves, individuals are unable to contract in order to comine their capital into sufficiently large amounts for such R&D.
To believe the second, one must believe that government planners are either (a) more intelligent; or at least (b) more insightful than are private owners of capital---and economically successful ones at that, speaking of those who have amassed large amounts of capital.
Personally, I don't buy any of it. The market is perfectly capable of funneling capital to productive uses, and entrepreneurs are perfectly capable of identifying profitable (i.e. useful) innovations, and perfectly willing to invest in them. Besides, who's not to say that---instead---were all that capital always in private hands and never in government's hands, that we wouldn't now have EVEN BETTER technologies? Mr. Zakaria is focusing only on what he sees, and interpreting what he sees incorrectly besides, imo.
If the government hadn't intervened, then X would not exist....
Sounds like hypothesis contrary to fact.
Bill Smith wrote the following post at Sun, Oct 31 2010 7:09 PM:
You can't possibly be trying to make a case that the DOD is more capable in Research and Development than the very Companies and creative hard working people they looted the money from
Oh, not me. It was a quote from Fareed Zakaria, I found the claim implausible. I guess he (and the guest CEOs on his show) are saying that without the DOD money, such things would not have been invented. Being in technology myself, I think they are all pretty bad examples. You might make a case that the GPS system might not have been deployed (when it was) without such a defense funding, but his suggestion that it is what makes the mobile phone industry a great success is quite a stretch.
Even with NASA, he doesn't really have a case since the very climate for private investment has been greatly handicapped by the taxing. How can anyone guess what "might have been" if companies hadn't been so restricted by the heavy taxing? I think the general problem with Zakaria's position is that he thinks that some omnipotent bureaucrat can better direct R&D funding than the market.
How can anyone guess what "might have been" if companies hadn't been so restricted by the heavy taxing?
Yes, it's fallacious; it's called hypothesis contrary to fact.
Example: "Good thing Markoni invented the radio because without him, we wouldn't have the radio today!"
My apologies to you
Gee. Who would have thought to connect computers together? DARPA probably also discovered that you can burn things with fire.
The specific innovation alluded to when it's claimed DARPA "invented the internet" is TCP. The thing about TCP is the network is decentralized. If one server gets hit by a bombing run, all the other servers can still talk to each other. The army declared TCP useless and released it to the private sector. But I seriously doubt nobody would have ever come up with a decentralized network design if DARPA hadn't.
If one server gets hit by a bombing run, all the other servers can still talk to each other.
Can't servers crash?
The reason we lost in Vietnam is cuz DARPA was too busy looking at and making early LOLcats.
Seriously, if DARPA is so innovative... why don't they still continue to be an internet provider even now in its non-crap edition (which happened only in the last 5 or 6 years). Why not monopolize their invention?
Internet is just telephones for computers. If the free market didn't make it up, its because there wasn't a free market in telephones. Verify and weep.
From someone who has personally worked on DOD funded projects before I can at least make the case that the money (and there is LOTS of it) is spent very inefficiently! This fact alone might bring one to believe that without DOD money/contractors there would be much more efficient producers which would in turn produce much better products ;)
Thanks for confirming my post, freeradicals
Sorry Smiling Dave, I didn't mean to sound redundant, you are spot on with your analysis of the situation.
The government didn't invent (directly or indirectly) computers. In fact, even the fathers of computing theory (Turing, Church, Kleene, von Neumann, and so on) did not invent computers. Nature invented computers - biological organisms are* computers. As always, the self-aggrandizing emperors of the universe that reside in the halls of academia and the halls of power and the back-alleys of journalism ascribe responsibility to themselves and to each other for things that not only did they not invent, no man did.
Clayton -
*They are at least computers, they may be much more but that's beside the point, here.
Lol, you arent being redundant at all. I was giving an armchair conjecture, you confirmed it from experience.
Okay, cool, sometimes the undertone with things read in text only can be ambiguous. Nice armchair conjecture, much better than the one's I hear on YouTube in objection when I leave comments in support of the free market :)