[covidacct]

Here's one teeny tiny example. They made a smart investment, to the tune of billions of dollars, in computer science. And not just for the past 30 years, but continuously for the past 100 years.

That investment included a modest (6-7 figure, depending on how your count) investment in a project on digital libraries years before private capital caught on. The private investors were rewarded handsomely for their investment in that digital library, but we, the taxpayers, were not.

[_2d30]

You could make a claim about the internet which would be reasonable but that is also a miniscule portion of what the federal government has done with our money so using a teeny tiny example is more of an exception that proves the rule type of thing. The amount we spend on the Federal government and what we get back for it is crazy bad. The problem is NOT the federal government having too little money. It's a huge proportion of GDP, especially compared to when our government was vastly more effective. The problem is that the institutions that make up our government are dramatically incompetent and squander the massive amounts of funding we give it.

> That investment included a modest (6-7 figure, depending on how your count) investment in a project on digital libraries years before private capital caught on. The private investors were rewarded handsomely for their investment in that digital library, but we, the taxpayers, were not.

Definitionally, if private investors made money, so did the taxpayers:

1) The investors are taxpayers who benefitted.

2) The investors returns were taxed and all future economic activity that came from it was taxed.

3) Societally we got the "digital libraries".

[nopriorarrests]

I still do not understand the logic. Let me put it straight.

1. US Government has unlimited funding, heck, it came up with 2 trillions _during last month alone_ with some financial alchemy which I don't fully understand. But clearly it's not starving.

2. US Government has kinda poor record producing tangible results during last 30 years, in terms of advancing science, housing, whatever. I mean, can CDC quickly figure out in 2020, are the pieces of cloth on my face help to fight the virus or not? Seems it's still up for discussion.

3. Private capital, during the same time frame, gave us google search and maps, smartphones, movies on demand and god knows how much other stuff.

So, based on these 3 observable points, we should "Tax the living hell out of capital"? I still not getting it.

[covidacct]

> Private capital, during the same time frame, gave us google search and maps, smartphones, movies on demand and god knows how much other stuff

I was perhaps too coy.

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=100660...

I'm not even sure what to say about maps.

[kingaillas]

>So, based on these 3 observable points, we should "Tax the living hell out of capital"?

Sure, because the government is supposed to provide infrastructure, which in turn allows all kinds of other stuff to flourish on top.

All those examples that private capital gave - who built the internet and spent enough money to create the early market for computers?

>I still not getting it.

If the government is supposed to supply education, health, and infrastructure, then it needs to be paid for somehow. Corporations don't care since there is no immediate monetization possible (plus tragedy of the commons aspects) and the free market simply assumes this stuff appears out of the thin air (externalize the cost somewhere else).

[ssivark]

> Private capital, during the same time frame, gave us google search and maps, smartphones, movies on demand and god knows how much other stuff

That's an extremely lazy and superficial analysis.

Where did the foundational ingredients for each of those things come from? Computers, networks, video compression, touchscreens, materials, ... heck, even pagerank, and a large fraction of the breakthroughs in ML/AI (till very recently) have come from academia -- through publicly funded research. Companies are very good at solving the "last mile" to apply technologies towards making products, but don't typically have the vision or the wherewithal to pursue deeper innovations.

[manigandham]

Public funds for research is a tiny fraction of the funds that the government spends. There are trillions wasted elsewhere that shows that overall it is terrible with spending money productively.

[kingaillas]

All the same, the reason you have maps on your smartphone can be traced to GPS satellites and ultimately the space program itself, funded by the government.

Yeah yeah, SpaceX exists now, decades after all the very tough and very expensive initial work.

[manigandham]

Nobody is denying that. The point is that the government is not lacking for funding but poorly spending the money it already has.

Imagine how much more we could have now if the space program budget was more than a fraction of a percent. That won't be fixed by just giving more money to the govt.

[mnky9800n]

Just to address "producing science".

Science is incremental, often is done with out clear end products, and value can only really be measured much later typically in terms of wide spread effect. Like the internet existed decades before everyone used the internet. And only because tax dollars supported it.

Thus if you want more output, they only true solution is to fund much more science than is funded today.

[nopriorarrests]

If some machine takes your money and produces 98% war and 2% science, maybe - just maybe - the only true solution to fund more science is not to put more money into said machine, but change configuration first.

[mnky9800n]

That's true but the machine we currently use doesn't produce 98% war.

[aey]

There is 0 evidence to suggest that private corporations wouldn’t have figured out the same thing. Or those same people sitting around at MIT wouldn’t have built the same thing without darpa.

It’s not like “communication“ is an industry that is starving for investment or talent.

The government sucks at spending money. Giving to the banks is the least stupid thing to do. The banks at least have some way to propagate it down to large funds and eventually to smaller funds that have some sense in what is a worthwhile investment or not.