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Comment by taurath | Hacker News Reader

Its quite possible we really underestimate the level to which state enterprise plays a role in innovation. Its sort of like we think "oh in the 80s sure but not anymore!". Ditto pharmaceutical "technology" with really heavy basic research funded by universities.

I have no idea where the line is though, and its hard to say what might've happened in a better "market".

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The good thing with state innovation is that it doesn’t necessarily end up with the question: “and how do we make money from this?”, which too frequently is answered by “oh we’ll just sell people’s data”.

data is never personal, data by definition is public, not to sound too anarcho-capitalist about this but "people's data"a ready starts to sound like there's a notion of collective ownership involved as opposed to "personal" data or information which wouldn't be there for the "stealing" or "selling" in the first place had the technology it rides on didn't exist and so on and so forth.

I’m not sure how it’s possible to come to that conclusion unless you deny the existence of any sort of right or moral obligation to privacy.

Or without ignoring the concepts of self-sovereignty and the right to ownership. The horseshoe theory strikes again.

>data is never personal, data by definition is public

This is obviously not true.

The big difference to the 80s compared to today, at least in the West, is the the Cold War.

Cold War was a huge economic engine for state subsided private companies that not only produced defense material but also that innovation spread into commercial products, cars, electronics, telecommunication etc.

Today that process within some areas (not tanks) almost the reverse, Defense departments now buy off the shelves components instead of custom made.

With that said I think that Chomsky oversimplifies when calling the todays IT sector for parasitic, you have that perspective when you think the state should govern the economy & innovation from a state perspective. I think a better and more pragmatic view is is should be a symbiosis between two different interest.

Chomsky is an anarchist and, at least long term, does not want a large “nanny” state that does everything. However, he may accept increased public/accountable/democratic power as a stepping stone away from large private/unaccountable/tyrannical power.

We just left the 20 year "Forever War", not much difference in terms of the ability for the state to steal tax payer dollars and give it to private companies. History repeating.

Look at the miracle of the covid mRNA vaccines. Moderna was state sponsored years ago to develop the tech.

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