|
|
|
|
|
|
by QuarterReptile
1730 days ago
|
|
|
The space race was possibly the pinnacle of the principle that government spending can accelerate technological progress in particular fields by raining money on those fields. The progress puts it way ahead of what could be expected and occurs to the detriment of sectors from which the money was taken. We now have a good understanding of just how far ahead we pushed ourselves beyond what market forces were going to pursue: 50-60 years, which is pretty cool. |
|
|
Actually, that might be electronics and computers. The basis for Silicon Valley was created during WWII - by unrestrained debt-based government spending.
https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo -- "Secret History of Silicon Valley"
Of course, maybe trying to rank the developments by industry or sector makes no sense, sooo much was influenced by what happened in that period. Agriculture too, if what I read and remember correctly a lot of WWII chemical industry was reused for things like fertilizer, but I don't have a good (i.e. direct and good quality scientific study instead of some blog post or pop book) source for that.
I dislike this separation of "government" vs. "business". I remember an MIT biology course (genetics) where the professor explained Gregor Mendel (the guy with the beans) a bit more - his circumstances. That man wasn't some random person who purely by chance happened to be interested in biology and inheritance. Turns out he was part of a far wider effort of church, state and industry to produce economic progress. Historically, even looking at how England became a world power, there never was such a separation. Government always acted as an extension of economic interests in combination with the merchants, later with the capitalists.