> iPhone would not exist without the development of the internet during the cold war on gov grant
Isn't that a bit of a broken-window fallacy, though? We can see that the iPhone exists, and we can see that it exists in part as a result of the State grants which funded the development of the Internet, but we can't see what that money might have funded had it not been spent on those grants. We have no way of knowing what the original earners of those dollars might have chosen to invest them in, and what the world would now look like had they been free to do so.
We do know from history that while socialist economies like the USSR and its satellites did indeed tend to improve their economies measurably over their pre-socialist levels, freer governments tended to improve their economies to an even greater degree, leading to exponential quality-of-life differences over the decades. The average Russian was better off in 1989 than he would have been in 1913, as was the average American, but that average American was so much better off than the very best-off Russians that Boris Yeltsin was converted simply by seeing a Houston grocery store[1].
I love the Internet deeply, and I'm glad that government grants financed the research which led to it, but I wonder what else I might have had if those grants had been spent otherwise, just as a Russian in 1989 was no doubt glad for what he had — and amazed when he saw what he could have had.
Isn't that a bit of a broken-window fallacy, though? We can see that the iPhone exists, and we can see that it exists in part as a result of the State grants which funded the development of the Internet, but we can't see what that money might have funded had it not been spent on those grants. We have no way of knowing what the original earners of those dollars might have chosen to invest them in, and what the world would now look like had they been free to do so.
We do know from history that while socialist economies like the USSR and its satellites did indeed tend to improve their economies measurably over their pre-socialist levels, freer governments tended to improve their economies to an even greater degree, leading to exponential quality-of-life differences over the decades. The average Russian was better off in 1989 than he would have been in 1913, as was the average American, but that average American was so much better off than the very best-off Russians that Boris Yeltsin was converted simply by seeing a Houston grocery store[1].
I love the Internet deeply, and I'm glad that government grants financed the research which led to it, but I wonder what else I might have had if those grants had been spent otherwise, just as a Russian in 1989 was no doubt glad for what he had — and amazed when he saw what he could have had.
[1] http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2014/04/when-boris-yeltsin-...