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by _flag 4674 days ago
The entire point is that the government can invest in things that it deems valuable but not necessarily likely to make an immediate profit.

The internet is an excellent example. Nobody would have predicted it would have taken off as it did, and so anyone who wanted to make an "internet" would have difficulty accumulating the capital for it. But since the military was able to build it without worrying about future profits, a large-scale and risky project was able to become a success.

The same is true of any long-term research, or any type of project that is primarily a public good. Most scientific research is not done with the explicit intention of "we want to make X", because what "X" is can't be known until you understand what is possible! But since nobody knows what is possible beforehand, investors aren't willing to invest in most research, because the simple advancement of scientific knowledge is something of public value and not private value.

1 comments

The military did not build the internet, and all that follows is thus incorrect.
Although I used the word "build", the entire post is talking about the investment. Regardless of whether you consider the people who "built" it to be government employees, the funding was military funding. Things like ARPANET were Department of Defense projects.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make.