Good point. But it wasn't entirely a command economy that achieved these technical wins. In other words you can say Sputnik in 57, but everything you listed appears to have had a capitalist basis. NASA could not have gotten off the ground withoutr Grumann, for example. GE, the boiling water reactor, the internet, the military internet in 66 without TRW. Why I like the prize model for innovation, is that it seems to work better nowadays, where as the command economy model works better in 1913 or 1948. I cannot be certain of this, or why this seems true. Perhaps, its not true and I am wrong, but for example when the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico 3 years ago, we saw a flood of innovation coming to the rescue. From what I understand, the fix to the oil flood was stemmed by the design of a master plumber living in Kansas. The plumber was paid an undisclosed sum for his model, but there were lots of others, some from private companies, others from academia.
And where are the great entrepreneurial advances of the past? Did private investors invent nuclear power, space flight, GPS, the internet, vaccinations, the Panama Canal, interstate highways. Free market capitalism is great for some things, but it's not going to invest in developing stuff with a 20yr horizon for return. Brent -----Original Message----- From: meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> To: everything-list <everything-list@googlegroups.com> Sent: Sat, Nov 9, 2013 6:21 pm Subject: Re: Our Demon-Haunted World On 11/9/2013 2:49 PM, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: > Yes, Jesse, I do buy into that arguement. If you permit me, I will exclude DailyKos Kos > Kids from your evidence, as the are far from a disinterested party in this matter. > Whatever the politics, whatever the polemics, a technology has to do this, be > successful. If solar is always just a fraction of the world's energy, despite decades > and bilions, then I have some problem with proposing it. "If", but then you draw conclusions as if you had stated a fact. Decades after oil was discovered it too only supplied a fraction of the world's energy. > Or a successful solar tech, that powers all human activity, forever, may be 200 years > away, for some unknown reason. What's your point - that you can imagine some insuperable problem with solar power? The Sun might stop shining? What about not nearly so speculative exhaustion of easily extracted fossil fuel? What if fossil fuel runs out? What if it makes large areas of the earth uninhabitably hot and dry. > What should we do until that glorious day? We can say exactly, the same with fusion. Tax > payer subsudies are fine, if they work. But I surmise these companies live > for the > subsidies, and not the big win in the market place. You surmise whatever fits your prejudice. > Hence, my alternative of a grand prize to spur innovation, and win a giant profit that > will wipe out an investors debts. I say we as a society have waited way too long, doing > things the Statist way, lets let innovatoes, innovate, for the reward of an avalanche > of prize money, plus tons of profits. I sense we are standing still, otherwise. And where are the great entrepreneurial advances of the past? Did private investors invent nuclear power, space flight, GPS, the internet, vaccinations, the Panama Canal, interstate highways. Free market capitalism is great for some things, but it's not going to invest in developing stuff with a 20yr horizon for return. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
