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Comment by apatters | Hacker News Reader

Even though I'm a small government, pro-markets kind of guy, one point this article touched on which I find quite interesting is that so much of the good stuff on the Internet (TCP/IP, the WWW, NCSA Mosaic, the Linux kernel, the IRC protocol, etc.) was basically publicly funded--if not directly then it was usually a guy at a university somewhere.

Whereas the bad stuff (AOL, Internet Explorer, spam, the scammy digital ads industry, Orwellian Google, Orwellian Facebook, mandatory DRM) has generally come from the private sector. (And VC, dear Hacker News, bears its share of responsibility.)

My only takeaway from this, and it is admittedly milquetoast, is we should take a little more of that public money we spend on war and instead spend it on general science and technology research.

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> Even though I'm a small government, pro-markets kind of guy

There's something at the root of the American psyche that makes us deathly afraid to admit otherwise. Is it a fear of appearing weak, relying on institutions? Is it a fear of being compared to those who are on welfare?

I believe this fear is holding back many of us from discussing solutions in earnest. Social services, and the pervasive hand of the government, has a place in a healthy technologically oriented society in the 21st century. But it must be a place of transparency and low-corruption in order for our institutions to be trusted.

Or we can continue to fervently worship short-term profits over long-term pursuits, and continue to insultingly underfund research.

I can't speak for appaters, but for me it's not a fear of appearing weak, but a fear of the power we give government.

>...the pervasive hand of the government...

This is partially what scares me. You mention that our "pervasive" government "has a place in a healthy technologically oriented society" and I agree, but I believe that it is possible to have a government that provides the services we need while have very limited powers.

As it stands most of the gross injustices that are done to the people by large corporations only happen because they have enshrined themselves in the institutions of government so as to give themselves special privileges (local monopolies, anti-competitive practices, etc).

>But it must be a place of transparency and low-corruption in order for our institutions to be trusted.

My ideal government would be afraid of its own people, that way we would not have to trust the government at all, but rather simply get rid of the institutions that did not perform their duties.

Transparency is very important and, as I'm sure many people here understand, as the complexity of a system increases the internal workings become more and more opaque.

So you're in agreement?

Yes, my comment underlines the need for "institutions", but it also emphasizes human nature and the need to make these institutions resilient to being gamed by the greedy.

> Is it a fear of appearing weak, relying on institutions? Is it a fear of being compared to those who are on welfare?

Not even remotely, and it's a little presumptive to assign these motives to people who see things differently from you. I just make an effort to play devil's advocate or try and look at the other side. At the same time I know where my philosophical roots lie. I'm anti-big government because I'm anti-concentration of power. Of course government is capable of doing good. But the more power and money you assign to it, the greater the risk of corruption.

> I'm anti-concentration of power

Where do you think power goes in a free market where the rich/powerful are already at a tremendous advantage? Wealth trickles up.

My view on this is that regulations which promote competition are an appropriate delegation of authority from the people to their democratically elected government.

I'm pro-free markets, and monopolists can do as much damage to them as the government can. Government intervention can be justified if it makes markets more free.

I'm not a Sith -- I don't deal in absolutes :)

> I'm pro-free markets, and monopolists can do as much damage to them as the government can. Government intervention can be justified if it makes markets more free.

Every libertarians failure is to not recognize that left to their own devices the "free markets" naturally always consolidate into oligopolistic cartels or a monopoly with poorer outcomes for the consumer.

The supply and demand sides are not incentive compatible and should thus always be regulated (helps with accounting for the externalities as well)

Your last line pretty much answered your own question.

Most small-government guys (myself included) distrust anything controlled by flawed humans with the power to target and totally ruin an individual at a whim. I personally hate the idea that I could build myself up from nothing and someone could conjure up a story to take my work away from me.

We are just pessimistic when it comes to institutions... yes it can bring great benefit, but you can also lose a great amount. History has shown us many examples of people striving towards utopia and ending up causing unspeakable loss.

And proselytizing our current system isn't setting up a dystopia of its own?

Despite the prevalent challenges and maladies afflicting the republic, calling the current state of affairs dystopian is hyperbole.

I said "setting up" a dystopia. You can't seriously see almost every communication being monitored, the middle class being replaced by cheap overseas/automated labor, and the amount of easily buyable lawmakers to be indicative of a sustainable, bright future?

Your question makes the assumption that our current system qualifies as "small government".

The filibuster is gone.. Trump is able to by executive order deport people and change America's course on the world stage.. Net Neutrality is being destroyed and new laws are being made to promote the big players in the market...

That's not small government. That's big government.

Okay then, I must not be sure what you envision as "small government". Did you have any examples in mind? Any examples that allow for innovation, propel a first world standard of living, and protect the rights of its citizens?

It's funny you end your comment with that remark on war...

The Internet you mentioned at the top of your comment saw its roots as a DARPA project called "ARPANET". That's right, it was a Department of Defense project.

During the Cold War and the Space Race, the military was heavily tied with "general science and technology research". Aerospace, materials, you name it, if it had some sort of military application it was looked into.

So yeah, war sucks and the military might waste money in some projects but it's unwise the look at military and science in black-and-white, this-or-the-other terms.

DARPA just funds research. There's no reason that has to be done through the military, that's just the way it is right now. If DARPA had the same funds but was part of the department of transportation or something, we still would have gotten the internet.

We still need defense research, but the fact that a lot of our advancements have come through the military doesn't mean that's the only way it can happen.

Wasn't ARPANET started as a project where individual communication nodes could fail, and the message could still arrive? Military technology generally needs to be reliable, which makes it a good fit for civilian use as well. Of course, there are plenty of aspects of military technology that isn't as necessary in civilian life.

It was originally an internal tool for ARPA researchers to collaborate. It had very little to do with the military, and ARPA scientists were not the only ones working on something like this. It absolutely would have happened somewhere else around the same time if the defense department wasn't interested.

This is very true, however DARPA was not prosecuting wars -- it was doing, well, general science and technology research intended to assist us in prosecuting wars.

Ultimately we reaped benefits far greater than those intended.

So maybe if the military merely shifted more of its budget from actually dropping bombs over to R&D, we would at least be making progress.

Sometimes I wish the military could only start R&D projects for things they can find civilian applications for.

That way we wouldn't need an actual shooting war to reap the benefits.

Yes, the concept that military research funds other innovations is just all backwards and silly. It's just like when they justify the space program by saying "we invented Tang!" Really? Because it would have been cheaper to just invent Tang, then.

Well, it's also possible that without the space program we never would have invented Tang at all. This scenario seems more realistic when you apply it to the Internet, the design parameters were pretty nuts -- they were trying to come up with a communications network which could survive a nuclear war. And no one was really saying that we needed the Internet until we already had it, but afterwards it was obvious how great it was. Without DARPA who knows if we would have gotten anything like the Internet we have today.

Point is having lots of people out there doing very random and diverse research is a good thing. It may not be the most cost efficient path from A to B, but serendipity provides for some remarkable outcomes we might never have achieved otherwise.

It can unearth "unknown unknowns" to borrow from Rumsfeld. Or "black swans" to steal from Taleb.

You're overlooking the counterfactual here. The fact that ARPANET was a Department of Defense project doesn't mean that defense spending itself caused it to come to fruition, and similarly it doesn't mean that without war (and defense spending), something like the ARPANET would never have been invented.

Separately, it seems far more significant that the early ARPANET was composed of networked computers based at universities.

Its common to credit the military with scientific advances. But when you spend a trillion dollars, and get non-stick skillets, you start to wonder if there was a cheaper way.

Its like, "I don't like being an assassin, but at least I get to meet new people".

Google came out of Stanford--there was a lot of academic involvement in search engine research, competitions, and so on at the time. I went to some of the conferences where it all took place. I was startled by how quickly Google rose, though.

I hear you about the "Orwellian" part--this isn't the Internet that I imagined, the one with RFCs and protocols. The worst offender is Facebook. I will never have anything to do with Facebook. I really wish there were more search engine competitors, too. It's important to not have monopolies on information seeking.

This only underscores the point. "Do no evil" Google originated with academics who had figured out some neat tricks for improving search relevance. It was only later when they started investing huge amounts in ad tech that Orwellian Google emerged and they created something nefarious.

What's the (right wing) libertarian strategy for mitigating our winner takes all economy?

Having actually read some Adam Smith (not the whole book), he goes on and on about asymmetric access / advantages granted through government and how it must be prevented. The free-market strategy is to recognize that the winner take all capitalist frequently uses the government as the vehicle for winning, and thus limit government.

That is not the same as no regulation / de-regulation! Adam Smith was basically saying we need regulation, to keep the government and business apart.

IMO, government regulation works when it is structural (e.g. Glass-Steagall worked because it was a simple structural rule) and when it is at the right level (DMVs works because they are state based) and it is easily understood.

I want to believe that governance (such as market regulations) can work when there are checks & balances, transparency, accountability.

Who says they need one?

Define a "libertarian" as someone who advocates for the state to play a minimal role in the lives of people.

There are a few different reasons I could be libertarian:

1> I believe that I will be better off if the scope of the state's activity is minimized.

2> I believe that most people will be better off if the scope of the state's activity is minimized.

3> I believe the world will be more just if the scope of the state's activity is minimized, whether or not that leads to anyone being better off.

Libertarians in groups [1] & [3] need not offer a strategy for mitigating any economic phenomenon, even if that phenomenon is to the detriment of the majority.

I've heard people argue the validity of belief [2], saying that the amount of value in the economy will grow faster than than it is absorbed by the "winners" who are amassing it. I'm not convinced, though.

Why does everyone think this has to somehow be "mitigated?" If we had a level playing field, then winners should win, but on the next round, if they screw up and lose big, then others should get their chance to overtake them. What we have these days is socialized losses--there's nothing even remotely libertarian about that! The problems are self-correcting, but we don't let them ever correct and instead we get these massive industries who run to government for sweetheart deals and to clobber their competitors via regulation.

Why can't I get decent broadband service from a company that is ethical instead of these total shitbird outfits like Comcast?

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