Ustwo

The question at hand isn't does the government help R&D. It does, even though it tends to overspend when it does and a lot gets wasted, government money can be quite useful in jump starting something where profits are too far ahead for investors to feel confident.

The space race is one of those places, yet, as has been already proven, once private industry does it, it does it at a far better price, and didn't require tax money off the labor of the top 50% of the citizenry (the bottom 50% doesn't pay enough to matter).

But the real power in a free market is you don't have to trust it to have your best interests at heart for it to work. In the pursuit of profits, the self interest of the system, is what allows the innovations to take place. Despite the stories about a lucky idea, what most people don't think about is that this is WORK. It takes hours and hours, it takes failure after failure to finally come up with a solution. One of the more interesting companies in this is Dyson (dunno if I spelled that right), which took 4 years and 5000 prototypes to come up with their vacuum cleaner. You just won't find that sort of effort in government work. The old cliche 'good enough for government work' is there for a reason. When self interest is out of the picture so is motivation for 90% of the people involved. A gold plaque and a citation for a 'Job well done' isn't enough for most people to sacrifice time with friends and family.

But...but...but...the oil industry doesn't want cars to run on water, the pharmaceutical industry wants us to be sick...blah blah blah.

Yes, I'd be shocked if there has never been a time where a company said 'yes this is better but it will cut profits so lets not use it'. So what. The better solution wouldn't have even been invented had that free market not existed in the first place. Such a ethical dilemma is only really a factor if the company involved is the company who comes up with the new technology in the first place. Now maybe, as in its possible, the same way anything is possible like Big Foot, the oil industry or the like came up with something as amazing as cars running on water (which they can sorta with H2) and hid the technology. Ok fine. The issue is obviously no one in the communist world came up with it either, or the university level, or the private level not in big oil (unless you imagine men in black showing up when the lab tech secret agent phones them, in which case you watched way to much Xfiles as a kid). I know if I came up with it I'd get that patented ASAP and then spend the rest of my life making love to supermodels on piles of money.

Which leads me to what government DOES do really well in the whole free market process.

The patent office and protecting intellectual property. This is the key to it all. If you want to hug a bureaucracy hug this one. This allows not only the inventor profit, but also means you don't have to hide how its done. Its not a perfect system, some have abused the patent office, but its still the biggest part of the puzzle to why our technology has advanced so rapidly in the last 150 years (no Jimmy it wasn't due to a crashed UFO).

So in summery, you don't have to TRUST the free market to have your best interests at heart, it doesn't. You have to understand that its the best system there is for creating and advancing new technology.

Replace 'pure science' with 'theoretical science' and you would be correct. Science that may have no basis in reality, no use for mankind, its bad at. Still a lot of companies do spend quite a bit on this kind of research hoping they get lucky. After all if you were the first to invent something that was 'anti-gravity', well lets say you would be making love to 3 new supermodels on a mountain of money nightly.

I'd also add that there are very esoteric conferences that industry scientists attend where they close the doors and talk theory without worry about company secrets. My old research mentor used to attend one of those held in New England once a year.

Edit: By pure coincidence I just walked into my waiting room and saw this magazine.


From a quick read, it appears every single one of those advances is being advanced by private companies for profit. Go figure.

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