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Comment by sharemywin | Hacker News Reader

Just because demand went up in the past doesn't mean it will in the future. That Tax service argument is ridiculous. People did their own taxes in the past now they use tax software so in the future they will use tax perparers? not seeing it. The middle class was propped up by unions plain and simple. With out government intervention society trends toward the rich and the exploited.

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How did government intervention create the technology industry?

ARPANET was created by DOD. The Internet evolved from that.

Not really sure what you mean, but civilian computing technology is the product of military (think ENIAC and the Internet, GPS, and more) and other government uses (think Hollerith machine's use in census).

Errr... not sure if serious. DARPA, military and civilian projects etc etc.

Might have come about anyway, sure, but the early days of the computer industry point to a lot of Gov money flowing in and a lot of spinoffs from government-funded research.

Without copyright and patent law their is no high tech industry. Facebook, instagram, intel, microsoft, google all protected by copyright and/or patents. even on network effected businesses you could build screen scrapers and such that would by pass advertising without laws.

For example: Internet as we know it today was in large part shaped by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Bruce Lehman - they are behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. There would be no YouTube, no Facebook, and no others if not for "safe harbor" introduced in this paper.

Maybe we would have a distributed video distribution system instead if not for DMCA takedowns. I would have preferred that type of Internet to the one we have now with centralized control by a few large companies.

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