Come on, this board is too important for anti-government drivel from the WSJ editorial board. I read the WSJ every day but their editorials are mind-numbingly stupid. Many, if not most, significant ideas are funded by the government through universities and other entities and then handed off to business as it makes economic sense. Example: Solar panels cost $1,000 a watt when the government developed them for the space program, then oil companies stepped in when solar was $100 a watt and pot growers stepped in when they cost $10 a watt. Now panels are under $1 a watt. The right hates the government, the left hates oil companies and we demonized pot growers for decades until we figured out how to monetize and tax pot.
The internet was invented at UCLA and a few other universities with government money. I first ran into it a decade later consulting for JPL. Yup, more government money. Then Berners-Lee, (government funded at CERN), put a hypertext/hyperlink front end on the old tree structure Web 1.0 was ready for who? Pornographers. Pornographers were the first real wave of entrepreneurs to monetize the web. And of course today, the web is the backbone of every important business. There's a reason Jefferson saw religion as one of the three great evils of mankind.
The utter stupidity of the political left and right in this country drive me nuts. Our system works very well and we don't need the editorial goofballs at the WSJ or Mother Jones selling us their political opinions as fact when it's nothing short of religion. I don't care if they pray for salvation or the end of micro-aggressions but I do care when they try to upset a well oiled machine like we have in the US.
Rule #1, Don't lose money. Rule #2, read rule #1. - WB.
