"DARPANet was a fluke. It was never intended by th...

2005-10-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

"DARPANet was a fluke. It was never intended by the government to be used as a platform for commercial ventures . . ."

This is an excellent point. Most of the impact of the space program was tangential as well, but I think that bolsters my point. When the government sets out to push the envelope of what can be done, the benefits that flow from it go beyond the immediate project and push us into the future.

Computers themselves saw massive amounts of taxpayer funding as governments fought the crypto war. The highway system was supposed to facilitate quick deployment of troops and equipment. Where would we be without these government programs? Is it a coincidence that our mix of public research and private enterprise -- and a massive safety-net-protected consumer class -- has come to dominate the global economy?

At some point, these developments stop being flukes and become a pattern. The proper role of government is not to plan the economy, but to push the limits of what is possible and affordable in the interests of making things better. And to keep the players in the game.

As long as we're taxing people, it does little harm to establish minimum standards as far as health care and retirement. People with money to spend contribute to the economy, contribute to entrepreneurism by their mere existence.

This is true, the government doesn't need to plan ...

2005-10-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is true, the government doesn't need to plan the economy to participate in it. My original statement was a little overreaching in that regard. Our government has always tried to balance just how much fiddling will produce results and not trash the whole system. It's a balance they haven't always been able to maintain.

Although these major infrastructure improvements have been utilized by industry to thrive, they are in my opinion flukes. DARPANet was a fluke. It was never intended by the government to be used as a platform for commercial ventures, just as a way to decentralize info nodes in the event of a nuclear attack. It took independent creative thinkers to come up with ways to make money off it. Remember, Al Gore didn't invent the internet (I think that's going to go down with 'Only Nixon could go to China' as a 20th Century truism. :)

Anything the federal government has done directly as a way to improve the economy or the lot of individuals like the Great Society or the New Deal has fallen flat on its face.

Government is a large, lumbering bureaucracy and frankly anything it does that works is an accident or exploited by people who made something of it. This goes for highways, the internet, you name it. A large lumbering behemoth like the federal government can't respond to market forces in time to make a sustainable difference or useful contribution. It can provide the incentives that others can use, but that's about it, and that's why I say that most projects it participates in aren't worth our money.

Great post, btw, and I liked the Avocado Declaration reference.

Comments on catastrophile: On Duopoly and Gov't Investment

"DARPANet was a fluke. It was never intended by th...

This is true, the government doesn't need to plan ...