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Comment by patrickgzill | Hacker News Reader

You forgot to mention Solyndra : http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-17/taxpayers-recover-0...

I worked for a DARPA contractor for years. Nerds all wank over how awesome DARPA is, and how great they are for putting money into all these blue-sky projects that may not pan out, etc. Yet the administration puts some money into technology that doesn't have an immediate benefit in killing people, and people flip their shit.

For context: DARPA has a budget of almost $3 billion. The risk-weighted investment into Solyndra was probably on the order of the low tens of millions.

"The risk-weighted investment into Solyndra was probably on the order of the low tens of millions."

What do you mean by "risk-weighted investment"?

The loan to Solyndra was for $535 million dollars of which practically none was returned [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solyndra#Shutdown_and_investiga...

You have to compare apples to apples. DARPA gives out grants. Solyndra was a loan guarantee. The subsidy represented by a loan guarantee is the value of the loan multiplied by the probability of default.

Is their justification for the low risk of default? Such as an overall portfolio where other loan guarantees did not flop?

So you're telling me risky investments in possibly revolutionary startups can fail? If we go back to writing by PG, failures like this are proof we are making risky a enough investments to actually make a big difference.

Strategic conduct on the part of businesses isn't the same thing as smart (or ethical, or legal) conduct when it's done by governments. Everything has a context.

I agree. Which is why government making the risky investments that more conservative businesses won't in order to create the empowering innovations that will save our environment and improve our economy is a major positive for me.

And if it just happens to benefit major contributors and bundlers to the party of the President that is in power, well, that is entirely a coincidence!

Your "proof" logic is backwards.

PG's point was not that failing means you're doing it right, but rather that never failing means you're not pushing hard enough.

I understand that. But not everything the government funds fails. I am instead disproving the case presented to me—the failure of Solyndra is not evidence of a failing government effort.

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