“The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.” – Milton Friedman
The Editors’ Quote of the Day:
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The greatest exploitation of host populations historically comes from small groups of the same peoples who always implement communism with the goal of extracting wealth for themselves.
1) I’m not defending central government but Milton Friedman is wrong.
Most of our scientific progress has come from defense spending, esp in time of war. WWII and early Cold War R&D made major breakthroughs that lifted the US economy for decades.
2) Silicon Valley Democrat billionaires justifying their concentration of wealth and power by prating about “innovation” are full of it. Silicon Valley doesn’t create — Silicon Valley steals.
Bill Gates and Steven Jobs didn’t invent the PC — most of the early computer development was done on the East Coast for codebreaking and ballistics computations. The PC and integrated circuits were developed for the Minuteman ICBM guidance computer. The Pentagon’s DARPA developed the Internet and AT&T laid the coaxial broadband backbones out in the countryside so that the US Government could reconstitute the nation after a nuclear war under the Continuity of Government program.
Steven Jobs at least admitted to stealing — and put up a pirate flag in the MacIntosh development center to remind his engineers to not waste limited money reinventing the wheel. I agree with Sun Microsystems’ Scott McNealy that Microsoft never invented a thing in its life — it copied the inventions of others and then used its operating system monopoly to drive the real creators out of business. Spreadsheets. Word processing. database.
When Netscape invented the Internet browser, Microsoft copied it — and then used revenue from its Windows/Dos monopoly to drive Netscape out of business by giving Explorer away for free as part of the Windows bundle.
Which may be why innovation in computer science has slowed to a crawl. As in Qing China, why invent if the Microsoft Mandarins are going to take the fruits of your hard work? Of course, that oligarchy ensured China stagnated and became the sick man of Asia for centuries.
Google? Created with federal R&D at Stanford. Oracle? People in the industry with security clearances laughed at how Larry Ellison first sold Oracle vaporware to the CIA — and then manipulated CIA into paying for its development because major intel programs were dependent upon it being delivered.
-Don Williams
Very interesting points. If you really want to get to the root of things, just follow the money. Thanks for your insights.