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Comment by josephagoss | Hacker News Reader

> Wouldn't it be better if it was impossible to amass that concentration of wealth in the first place?

Just curious, but that would deny many millionaires and billionaires the chance to change the world. For sure, SpaceX and Tesla probably would not exist [1].

I'm surprised that this sentiment is growing among many people that somehow they believe the Government is going to be better at experimenting and managing these types of far out projects rather than the free market.

SpaceX has probably the most advanced rockets in the world, far surpassing that of all other countries.

I am not sure I want the future of our species solely in the hands of politicians and not giving private enterprise a chance to rise up and have a shot.

If I misunderstood the gist of your post, I do apologise.

[1] I know they both have taken Government money, but both Tesla and SpaceX could not have been started by a Government politician or employee.

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Really?

http://www.loper-os.org/wp-content/sovcosm.png

Although the manned moon landings were American, they probably wouldn't have happened if the Soviet Union hadn't beaten them into space. NASA were US Government funded. All manned launches since 2012 have been on Russian and Chinese rockets. No manned SpaceX launches yet. So it appears that communism has done more for manned space flight than private enterprise.

There are numerous other major government funded science and technology success stories: Manhattan Project, Concorde, CERN, ...

The US and USSR governments' effectiveness at early space travel had less to do with the ability of public entities to innovate and more to do with the existential threat of the Cold War. Constant fear of nuclear annihilation is not worth the increase in practical government research.

The same can be said of the Manhattan project with WWII. CERN is a valid counterargument, but I think it demonstrates that markets need to be occasionally corrected (to acomodate basic science research in this case), not that markets need to be dismantled.

Let's see, going to the moon, the internet, the atomic bomb, the space shuttle...I think the government has proven to be effect in the past. Not that the free market hasn't been effective too, but one might make the mistake of serious selection bias to really believe that the government can't perform "far out projects" well, especially when the will to perform them doesn't exist in the free market yet.

I think the big misunderstanding you and the parent commenter have is that you're conflating "large scale projects" with "far out projects". Just because both are large scale, doesn't make them the same thing.

Technologically complicated, Politically easy, "far out projects" or "moonshots", governments are relatively good. eg. putting the first man on the moon (politically easy: because of the competition with Russia).

Technologically easy, Politically complicated, "large scale projects", governments are (as the data shows) really, really bad at. eg. reforming the education system.

Some rationale: Humans looking for authority that then gain it, don't want to lose it. i.e. The dislike disruption. Government is run by humans with authority. It would then follow that governments don't like disruption.

Its extremely hard to politically justify disenfranchising all the poor performing teachers, administration, budget planners, healthcare workers, etc. even if it is actually in the best overall interest of society. Primarily because governments are a monopoly, and its in the best interest of all management (lower, middle or upper) in a monopoly to keep their controlling interests intact (and happy), regardless of productivity. As they say "keep things churning".

> governments are (as the data shows) really, really bad at. eg. reforming the education system

Are you sure? Finland government did pretty good in reforming education system..

> governments are a monopoly

No they are not! Bad governments, maybe. But ideally, they should be democratically controlled by the population, and then the usage of the term "monopoly" is meaningless. (Not to mention that each nation competes with other nations.)

I guess I do agree to this extent: There are things that are politically difficult for the government to do, just like there are things that are politically difficult for corporations/rational free market players to do.

The Internet wasn't the Internet before the Commercial Internet Exchange (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Internet_eXchange). I'm not sure how much credit the government can take for what it is now really. The space shuttle is no longer in service and failed with significant fatalities more than once. The atomic bomb is one of the most horrific technologies which exists. I'm not sure you're making your case with these.

Do you want me to list the failings of businesses and the horrific things they've created? Is it even fair to lump all players in the free market under one umbrella as it is to lump all government programs and governments of nations and call it "government"? The post I referred to argued about the ability of the government to lead "out there" projects well, and all of those are out there projects which had some "success" whether you agree with that definition or not.

I'm not saying that Government can't do great things, but it should never be the only player in town when it comes to innovation on a large scale. Denying private citizens the ability to have great wealth basically gives the Government a large scale monopoly on far out projects.

These are the types of projects where a single billionaires great wealth can inspire other investors to come along. If Musk couldn't pour millions into his ventures, it's unlikely the average investor would have followed him into space.

In addition, the USA invested in the internet, space and atomic weapons solely for the purpose of war, even the hubble is based on military technologies. I am again concerned that people are arguing for a future that's dependent on the needs of politicians or the military.

Even China was smart enough to see value in the capitalism model. Allow for the ability of great wealth, allow the private citizen to decide how to deploy the fruits of their work and something good might come out it.

Also, the Government has taken over a billion dollars in tax from Mark Zuckerberg, so the Government has plenty to play with. Remember, it's always easier to play with other people's money, hence the inefficiency regarding the use of tax dollars.

I have to agree with your sentiment about there being no check for the government, especially when there are things the government can't do. Still, on one hand, you have Zuckerberg trying to revolutionize education, while on the other hand, you have Soros and the Koch brothers inverting democracy for their personal interests. At least when the government is corrupt, you can vote them out or at worst, have violent revolution. An individual? Ask them kindly to stop? Kill them?

I think I'd feel more comfortable with corporation(s) competing with the government, because then, you could "vote against them with your dollar." Another thing which is done in government labs in the US is having labs/universities compete with each other for funding (although whether this yields good incentives for research is another story, and we're trying to find avenues for innovation that are difficult for the government, and ostensibly, difficult for govt labs too).

Finally, if we do accept this form of oligarchy (where one oligarch is the government we vote for), no doubt will we have entities which disagree with each other, say, Soros or the Koch brothers. Now, then, the rest of us just become the grass at the feet of fighting elephants[0], and I hell don't know how anyone would feel comfortable with that. I suppose the only option you have then for having a voice is to become the next elephant, and while I love hacking/disruption as the next guy, I know statistics too, and I won't delude myself I will become Zuckerberg or even four orders of magnitude near him.

[0] http://www.afriprov.org/african-proverb-of-the-month/27-2001...

> Denying private citizens the ability to have great wealth basically gives the Government a large scale monopoly on far out projects.

Not necessarily. People can still organize, collect wealth and build a large scale project themselves. Or the bureaucrats running companies can organize and together finance big projects. There are many other possibilities.

> allow the private citizen to decide how to deploy the fruits of their work

Assuming these really are their fruits, which is pretty disputable in case of very wealthy people.

> it's always easier to play with other people's money

I agree, and this is actually the reason why one person owning a billion may be more willing to invest to crazy projects than a thousand people owning million each.

Facebook paid £4,327 corporation tax to the UK Government in 2014 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34504474).

A good article on this subject arguing otherwise http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-myth-of-basic-science-144561.... Continuation of the ideas from the What Technology Wants book.

The space shuttle program was a horribly expensive sideways step that help back space exploration.

On the other hand, we may never know how many Shakeaspeares never got a chance to write, because they were poor and died young. If you think it takes big investments to "change the world", you're wrong, the combined efforts of millions of people may be less glamourous, and harder to quantify, but that doesn't make them less real. The future of our species depends more on how we treat each other than anything else. Private enterprise won't be able to stop war for water and resources. The incentives will be more aligned with arming those wars, and then we'll be burned out.

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