[quote=pri_dk][quote=CA renter]The “private market” cannot function successfully all by itself for any length of time. It never has, and it never will.[/quote]
Another straw man dances past. Nobody ever said private market means “no government.” Nobody but you.
How much was the government involved in the first 100 years of US history and innovation? How many government scientists were employed? Who did all the inventing back then?
Before 1900, the government was less than 5% of the US economy. Almost all of that was defense spending. How’d we do up to that point?
Did the government invent the steam engine, or the sewing machine, or the cotton gin, or any of the other dozens of transforming technologies of the 19th century?
[quote]And did you seriously miss the posts explaining how the GOVERNMENT was involved in the development of computers and the internet.[/quote]
And did you seriously miss the other 99% of the history of computers and the internet that has nothing to do with government?
Did the government invent the transistor, the microprocessor, the PC, the programming languages, the database, the network router, the fiber-optic cable, …
Did Steve Jobs and Bill Gates ever work for the government?
Did the government invent the LCD display that you are staring at right now?
Did the government invent the search engine that you are so fond of using to prove how smart you are?
In your world, the thousands of engineers and scientists who work at IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Google, and Oracle, etc. spend their days just waiting for the government to invent things.
Ever drive past the Qualcomm buildings? If your arguments are correct, then nothing has ever been invented inside there. All those engineers working there (some of them are Piggs) just sit around waiting for the next government development to come along so they can sell it. Apparently they don’t actually invent anything (and yet they file thousands of patents…)
But of course you don’t understand any of this. You have this bizarre, simple-minded notion that only people who get paychecks from the government actually do anything. The other 90% of the economy is just dead weight.
You use lists of “famous scientists” to prove your point. Your depth of knowledge is no more than a 4th grader writing a report on how science works.
So let me take it down to your level:
What government agency did Thomas Edison work for?[/quote]
Let’s start with some of your very own examples, shall we?
History of LCD:
“Friedrich Richard Reinitzer (25 February 1857 in Prague – 16 February 1927 in Graz) was an Austrian botanist and chemist. In late 1880s, experimenting with cholesteryl benzoate, he discovered properties of liquid crystals (named later by Otto Lehmann).
Reinitzer was born into a German Bohemian family in Prague. He studied chemistry at the German technical university in Prague; in 1883 he was habilitated there as a private docent. In 1895 (or even 1901)[1] he moved to the technical university in Graz. During 1909 – 1910 he served as the rector of the university.”
“The Graz University of Technology (German: Technische Universität Graz, short TU Graz) is the second largest university in Styria, Austria, after the University of Graz. Austria has three universities of technology – in Graz, in Leoben, and in Vienna[1]. The Graz University of Technology was founded in 1811 by Archduke John of Austria. TUG, as the university is called by its students, is a public university.”
…………… “Vsevolod Konstantinovich Frederiks (V-sev-oh-lod Khan-stan-tin-ovich Fred-eriks) (Russian: Всеволод Константинович Фредерикс) (April 29, 1885, Warsaw – January 6, 1944, Gorkiy) was a Russian/Soviet physicist. His primary contribution to physics was in the field of liquid crystals. The Frederiks transition was named after him.
After high school Frederiks attended Geneva University and for one semester attended the lectures of Paul Langevin in Paris. After defending his thesis and obtaining his PhD, Fredericks decided to continue his studies at Göttingen University. He was there for more than eight years, and with the outbreak of World War I he became a civil prisoner. During that period he became personal assistant to David Hilbert.
In the summer of 1918 Frederiks returned to Russia, and worked at the Institute of Physics and Biophysics in Moscow. In 1919 he became a lecturer at the University of Petrograd.” [from a COMMUNIST country, no less! – CAR]
“Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geißler (May 26, 1814, Igelshieb – January 24, 1879) was a skilled glassblower and physicist, famous for his invention of the Geissler tube, made of glass and used as a low pressure gas-discharge tube.
Geissler descended from a long line of craftsmen in the Thüringer Wald and in Böhmen.[1] He found work in different German universities, eventually including the University of Bonn. There he was asked by physicist Julius Plücker to design an apparatus for evacuating a glass tube.
Plücker owed his forthcoming success in the electric discharge experiments in large measure to his instrument maker, the skilled glassblower and mechanic Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geissler. He learned the art of glassblowing in the duchy of Saxe-Meiningen…. He finally settled down as an instrument-maker in a workshop of his own at the University of Bonn in 1852.[1]
Geissler made a hand-crank mercury pump, and glass tubes that could contain a superior vacuum.
The future value of Plücker and Geissler’s research ‘toy’ – apart from neon lighting – would be fully realized only 50 years later when Lee De Forest invented the Audion vacuum tube in 1906 … creating the entire basis of long-distance wireless radio (and TV) communications.
Geissler was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1868.[1]”
“The University of Bonn (German: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number of undergraduate and graduate programs in a range of subjects. Its library holds more than two million volumes. The University of Bonn has 525 professors and 27,800 students. Among its notable alumni and faculty are seven Nobel Laureates, two Fields Medalists, twelve Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize winners, Pope Benedict XVI, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche and Joseph Schumpeter. In the years 2010 and 2011, the Times Higher Education ranked the University of Bonn as one of the 200 best universities in the world.[2][3]”
I could literally go on for years about the role of public funding and public institutions in science, but know that I’d be wasting my time with you. You need to do more research before you spout off…your ignorance is frightening.
