Craig Haynie <cchayniepub...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If the technology is cost efficient, then the market will bring it. Even > if delayed by 20 to 50 years, this is a small price to pay for a moral > society run without threats of violence. You want to talk about violence? If France and the UK had delayed developing aviation before WWI they would have lost the war. They had a slight edge thanks to aircraft such as the Sopwith Camel (the best fighter of the war, based on enemy aircraft losses). Slight, but crucial. Or if the British had delayed the Hurricane, the Spitfire and radar in the 1930s, Hitler would have won in 1940. If the U.S. had not invested in the bomb, I am sure there would have been a million more Japanese killed or died of starvation, hundreds of thousands more Americans killed, and Japan would have been divided between the North and South, like Korea, because the Russians were preparing to invade from the North. U.S. invasion forces in Japan included 800,000 men, compared to just over 100,000 in the Normandy invasion. > In every case, the overall investments made by governments has paid back >> many times over. Individual ventures failed but overall the projects >> succeeded. >> > Not true. There was no return for the people whose money was taken. There > was no poll of those people, before their money was taken, asking if they'd > be willing to invest. Yes, there was. It is called an election. The Erie canal was a major political issue and policy. Road building has always been a make or break local issue, as it is in Atlanta this year. Lincoln was re-elected in 1864. He pushed the railroad legislation through early in his first administration. Everyone knew he was a big support of high-technology and a railroad lawyer, which was like being a computer entrepreneur today. The Civil War was won by the North primarily because the North was an industrial, mass-production, high-tech economy with experts who could build ships like the Monitor; railroad artillery capable of hitting targets miles away plus or minus 5 meters; hundreds of miles or railroad tracks practically overnight; repeating rifles and much else that the Confederate states could not begin to match. If the Virginia trench warfare had gone on a few more months the Federal armies would have brought in Gatling guns, for crying out loud! 600 rounds per minute. They deployed only a few, in Petersburg, VA. They would have had hundreds and it would have been a slaughter like WWI, except that only one side would have had them. People in the 1950s and 60s were in favor of cold war weapons development, and NASA. They could have voted against politicians who supported it, but they did not. On the contrary, if any politician had come out against cold war nuclear bomb expenditures or competing in the "space race" he would have been defeated by a huge margin. > This is another way of saying that the other investments during this > period were both profitable and of lower risk. Who knows what would have > come out of these investments if these people had had more money to invest > in the ventures they were interested in, instead of having their money > taken from them. Wonderful in theory. In practice it has never worked that way, and it never will. Here in the real world Uncle Sam has always been the main source of technological progress. You are living in an Ivory Tower. - Jed
