Freee market useless on its own

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

f the free market cannot support the necessary research, then the research is not necessary.

You have just dismissed 90% of the scientific breakthroughs of the last 500 years...

No, I'm just saying that those scientific breakthroughs would have occurred without government tax money.

Even you don't believe this drivel.

Yeah, I do, actually. Government is a blight, albeit necessary evil. It's like fire. When carefully used in small quantities and strictly controlled so it doesn't rage out of control it's useful, but set it free to do what it wants naturally and it becomes the most destructive force on earth.

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING ever "invented" by government made it into the commercial consumer world on government's dime. Every single "innovation" produced by government was intended to make government more powerful and was REDESIGNED and REINVENTED by the free market to satisfy a free-market consumer demand. Without exception.

[Seth]

Indeed and he can't, let's just see what came from a marketless impulse like the space conquest... on a free market dime, we would still be watching the moon, and probably using cabinet sized computers, and do without teflon and a lot of advanced plastics and materials (say, carbon fiber?), without the internet (that's pure DARPA, you remember that, right?), without portable phones, without any systems relying on satellites (like GPS) and flatscreen TVs would be the stuff of science fiction...

Nonsense. The space program was and is a monumental waste of taxpayer money that can be, and is being done cheaper and better by private interests like Burt Rutan. NASA's "zero defect" rule cost taxpayers uncountable billions of dollars to make a few expeditions to the moon for POLITICAL PURPOSES, and every damned benefit we've ever seen from the space program has been quite literally abandoned and we've not been back to the moon in more than a quarter century. All the realistic efforts to go to Mars are private, not government operations.

As for "space exploration," I'm sure it's nice to have closeups of Pluto or land something on a comet, but if you want to come closer to the answers about the origin of the universe, do it on YOUR dime, not mine. I'm more concerned about feeding people here on earth than I am about exploring the solar system...on the government's dime. If basic research is so important to you, then you shouldn't have any trouble paying for it yourself. After all, if the Ceres experiment results in some really cool invention you can make a huge packet by patenting it yourself and selling it. If it's just a jaunt to look at something you can't see from home, it's your vacation, so you pay for it.

GPS exists because there is a market for GPS. Indeed it took decades and lots of political pressure to get the government to even allow civilians to USE the GPS system at all, because it was "invented" by government, which kept it all for it's own self. Even after we proletarian slobs were munificiently allowed to use the system we paid through the nose for it was deliberately de-accuratized for more decades because the military wanted to keep it all to themselves. And yet now you can buy a device the size of a hockey puck that will provide you with 1 meter accuracy right out of the box, and centimeter accuracy with post-processing and differential GPS data for $500...because there is a consumer demand for such a device, not because government decided to market it. We had to tear GPS from the grasp of government.

[Svartalf]

GPS exist because we have a network of satellites to triangulate every point on the globe, and we have satellites because of military and political goals... without the states intervention, we'd likely never have gone into space in the first place and the "market" for GPS would be unfilled because we simply would not have the tech at all (and I mean, without what you call a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, we would not have satellites at all and computers would still be punch card driven transistor machines, not the miniaturized silicon marvels we do have)

[Seth]

GPS exist because we have a network of satellites to triangulate every point on the globe, and we have satellites because of military and political goals... without the states intervention, we'd likely never have gone into space in the first place and the "market" for GPS would be unfilled because we simply would not have the tech at all (and I mean, without what you call a huge waste of taxpayer dollars, we would not have satellites at all and computers would still be punch card driven transistor machines, not the miniaturized silicon marvels we do have)

Nonsense. We have satellite TV for crying out loud, and that was not "invented" by the government, nor was it funded by the government. There was a need for a precision satellite measurement system in the marketplace. We've had land surveyors for centuries. GPS was preceded by several other iterations of wide-area radio navigation systems, most of which came into being due to the needs of aircraft and ships for such navigation aids. Those were preceded by lighthouses and aviation beacons and concrete arrows on the ground directing mail pilots along the route. Those were preceded by compasses and sextants and precision timepieces, and those were preceded by magnetic compasses, which were preceded by stellar navigation of the most primitive sort.

Every iteration navigation aids has emerged because of a widespread commercial need for such improvements and the vast, vast majority of those system were NOT developed by the government, they were developed by private interests. Sometimes they were co-opted by the government, but their utility today is based on their commercial appeal not a government need, and that's true of GPS and the Internet.

"Tech" did not evolve because of government, government usually took over commercially-viable technical advances for its own purposes. Every technology we have today that is of use in the private sector would have made it to commercial success because of the free market and without government help, one way or another. The free market guarantees it.

If anything, government INHIBITS the commercial spread of new technology like GPS precisely because it wants to keep it secret and exclusive to the halls of power and control.

[JimC]

One thing about "inventions" is that they depend on a steadily increasing knowledge bank of pure science and mathematics, the vast body of which is generated by universities via academic research, not via market forces.

Seth wrote:

The notion that nothing would get invented without government involvement or tax money is a specious and entirely unprovable,

None of us have used the term "nothing". Invention, as opposed to pure research, can happen in a variety of contexts, which clearly include corporations, but also government run institutions. Market needs are one driver of invention, but curiosity, a desire to innovate for its own sake and sheer enjoyment of the challenge are other potent motivators of invention.

Seth wrote:

Produce any list you want and I can tell you that every single thing "invented" by government would have been invented by somebody other than government if there was a need for it in the marketplace.

You can "tell" us all you like, but there is simply no way to prove such specious nonsense without re-running the tape of history. It is likely that some inventions could have occurred in a variety of contexts, but it is drawing a very long bow indeed to assert "every single thing".

[Tero]

Both sides do certain things that would never be done by the other.

exactly

[Ian]

I think you're just trolling, Seth. Even you can't be so dumb as to believe what you're writing here. If you do, then I feel sorry for how truly stupid you are. It's impressive.

Tell me, would you privatize the Defense Department?

[Seth]

One thing about "inventions" is that they depend on a steadily increasing knowledge bank of pure science and mathematics, the vast body of which is generated by universities via academic research, not via market forces.

True enough, but that this is the case doesn't mean it must be the case.

Seth wrote:

The notion that nothing would get invented without government involvement or tax money is a specious and entirely unprovable,

None of us have used the term "nothing". Invention, as opposed to pure research, can happen in a variety of contexts, which clearly include corporations, but also government run institutions. Market needs are one driver of invention, but curiosity, a desire to innovate for its own sake and sheer enjoyment of the challenge are other potent motivators of invention.

Yup. No government needed, just the free market and individual effort.

Seth wrote:

Produce any list you want and I can tell you that every single thing "invented" by government would have been invented by somebody other than government if there was a need for it in the marketplace.

You can "tell" us all you like, but there is simply no way to prove such specious nonsense without re-running the tape of history. It is likely that some inventions could have occurred in a variety of contexts, but it is drawing a very long bow indeed to assert "every single thing".

Technology exists because technology is a necessary result of evolution, not because technology would not exist without government. Government may be helpful or harmful when it comes to advancing technology, as ISIS so aptly proves, but it is not a necessary component of technological advance. Most great leaps in technology and even understanding are not the products of government at all, they are the products of both individual inquiry and, although I know you're going to hate hearing this, theism, specifically Catholicism, which preserved the knowledge of the past during the Dark Ages, and Islam, which had many great thinkers as well.

Government support for science is a very recent invention indeed, usually involving technological innovation necessary to wage war or, perhaps, control populations and collect taxes. Government has no intrinsic interest in science unless it is of utility to government and government's never-ending quest for power and control. Any science that happens to leak out of the government's grip is purely by accident or by force of will of the people, not because government, and the people who run government, have any desire to let the proletarian masses in on the goodies.

Government is an impediment to science and technology, just as it is an impediment to everything else. It exists as a necessary evil but there is no reason to pour money down the government rat-hole to support science. You see, all government EVER does is collect taxes, skim off a percentage (usually about 30 percent) and then dribble out the remainder to political allies and those who will submit to the political will of the government, as in the obscene submission and cowering of "climate scientists" to the commands of the forces of global government.

Anything ever performed, commissioned or paid for by government could have been done cheaper, faster and better by private enterprise funded, if necessary, by the voluntary contributions of those who think the idea is a good one and worth investing in.

[Seth]

I think you're just trolling, Seth. Even you can't be so dumb as to believe what you're writing here. If you do, then I feel sorry for how truly stupid you are. It's impressive.

Tell me, would you privatize the Defense Department?

Well, for the most part the Defense Department IS "privatized." We don't have government factories using government employees supervised by government agents to build all that military hardware like the Soviet Union and so many other countries (mostly Marxist ones) do, we utilize the efficiency of the free market (such as they are within the MIC) to supply quite literally everything the Defense Department uses with the exception of the actual bodies of the soldiers involved, from the pencils the pushers in Washington use to the bullets the soldiers fire. Can you say "lowest bidder?"

So "privatizing" the military already exists. What is not privatized is the command of the military. Our volunteer military is every bit as much a "mercenary" army as any mercenary army that has ever existed. The soldiers go to war for pay because they want to, and we the taxpayers pay them to do so. Throughout most of history conscription has been the order of the day, where soldiers are drafted from the populace and forced to go to war.

So, the only difference between our current military and a mercenary army is that the command structure has a duty to obey the civilian leaders of the nation. But in theory there's nothing stopping our military commanders from simply deciding that the political and civilian command structure is not worth obeying and the army would become a pure mercenary army acting on its own behalf for its own benefit and profit.

So in fact the Defense Department is all but privatized right now.

That being said, political control of the military is one of the few legitimate functions of government because an unemployed mercenary army is a very, very dangerous thing to have around...kind of like a pit-bull trained for fighting in a day-care center.

[Ian]

So your answer is "No". Good.

[Seth]

So your answer is "No". Good.

No, my answer is there are plenty of aspects of the Defense Department that are justifiably privatized and there are some that are not, for good and rational reasons.

[Ian]

Exactly. That's a No.

[Seth]

Exactly. That's a No.

No, it's not exactly a "no."

[mistermack]

Personally, I like government.
I like it a lot.
And I like the kind that people get to choose every four or five years.

The less government interferes, the more we get ripped off.
They freed up the markets before the last crash. Everyone was arguing for less government interference.
And the result was the biggest rip-off in decades.

Right wingers always argue for less intervention. It goes down well with the more simple-minded voters.
But every time they "free up" the markets, you get abuse. And then they have to bring back government oversight. And then the whole cycle begins again.

Personally, I think government should ban short term bonuses to executives in all businesses.
Only allow it, if you actually OWN the business, without debts.
Any bonuses should be only payable after a ten year delay, conditional on the financial health of the business.

[rainbow]

Technology progresses fastest when both the public and private sectors are able to develop with little interference. They benefit each other. Time and time again, private industry piggybacks on top of something created by a government project with solely military or scientific goals in mind. And those public developers benefit by making use of the fast, competitive R&D done within the private sector for profit goals.

To say one side is simply better than the other is to miss the point. Both sides do certain things that would never be done by the other. They're a yin/yang relationship.

Correct. The Genome Project is an example.
No private enterprise would take on the cost of this and share the information. Many private enterprises are building on this information.

I find it difficult to believe that anyone can't see this.