grr. i can't keep up with so much stuff in each message. so i'm not gonna try:
"Standards can emerge quite handily in a competitive market place; it happens all the time without government intervention."
indeed they can. IP (internet protocol) developed over decades.
your screw example is false: i still can't use a whole lotta software for linux on windows or for windows on my mac. AOL was the model because everyone want to set up the "tollgate" for use of the internet. MSFT had something called blackbird or bluebird, which was gonna be their AOL clone. what motivation would any of them have had for providing complete interoperability.
IP is exactly about making things that are incompatible work together.
"The "extra stuff" is market-speak."
no the extra stuff is not market speak, it is additional pipelines for doing serious number crunching and special purpose 3d hypertorus network with broadcast along rows.
"it would make absolutely no sense to make a few thousand high performance chips on their own unique design; some minor varients"
you are thinking small. look at the specs of computers like ASCI Blue Pacific, ASCI White, BG/L (Blue Gene/L), Roadrunner. and look at the price tag.
"So your solution is to copy the Chinese and soviet-style government sponsored research labs. Brilliant idea . . . Not!"
no, the system we have in place right now works pretty well.
"Weapon systems do not require "supercomputing"; after all, it is not real time simulation."
no, they are massive simulations of plasmas and subatomic particles that are run with timesteps on the order of femtoseconds and track phenomena that evolve over milliseconds or more. on supercomputers they can run for days or weeks and produce data measured in petabytes.
"Oh, ya, your beloved government prevention of run-on-the-bank played a big part too in inducing market participants into all sorts of risky deals."
none of these was the cause exactly. it was greensperm's stubborn faith in the self-regulation of the markets. when he stacked the deck, he forgot about moral hazard. what he didn't realize is that they game he set up had a very obvious flaw: the best way to beat the system was to cheat so extensively that your failure would mean failure of the whole system. that way, if you lose, you're guaranteed a government rescue.
"The reason was import tax favored by the North, and rejected by the South. Taxation is quite impossible without gunpoint; without gunpoint, it's call voluntary contribution."
all ancient history. "taxation without representation" if you recall. if you oppose taxation, elect suitable representatives. you have representation. again, that's how we govern ourselves. again, if you don't like it, you can always get some cheap beachfront property in costa rica.
"So which national lab invented the i4004? Arguably the most important invention in the second half of 20th century."
of course intel invented the i4004, but intel did not invent the first processor, just the first single-chip processor.
as i said before, i'm talking research, you're talking engineering. research preceeds engineering. intel did not invent the technology to put digital cirtuits on silicon. they put some brain cells into scrunching an entire (small) processor on a single chip. i.e. they got there first, but everyone was on the same path. it was only a question of whether the technology was mature enough at the time. not to try to take away anything from their achievement, of course. but that's what the free market does well. science, it does not.
throw robotics at the free market and u get roomba. throw robotics at the army and you get hoards of wireless reconaissance drones.
"Why do you think none of those inventions that transformed the people's living standards came out the Soviet Union or China or India? They certainly did not lack government sponsored research. They graduated several times as many scientists and engineers as the US did."
no, the soviet union and china did not have government-funded PEER-REVIEWED research. they had government projects. there is a serious difference.
american universities are superior, of course. its known world-wide. why? because researchers at universities are doing cutting edge research. why? because they are funded through peer reviewed grants, which in turn they use to fund their own research and train their graduate students. and in turn they turn over technology to industry (cisco) or produce graduate students who exploit what they've learned (google) or spin off their own companies (akamai).
"Alan Turing was part of all the sharp brains that the government rounded up during WWII. The private sector simply had all the brilliant minds taken from it, and vast resources confiscated from it in order to fund the effort of killing fellow human beings in another country. By your logic, if not for governmen draft, there wouldn't be able-bodied men . . . after all the rejects in the civilian life during the war were not as fit as the drafted soldiers."
well that was england. and i'm sure, with v2's raining down on them, most folks appreciated the urgency. although clearly turing did not appreciate the army's efforts to cure his homosexuality.
ah, but some things never change.
my bottom line: free market is cool but it can use guidance, especially when the issue is basic research. that is the role of government or philosopher-kings or whoever we can find to take responsibility for such enormous decisions. with luck, they'll be smart people with good advisors. hockey moms need not apply.
