> SpaceX would not exist without inequality. Nor that supercomputer in your pocket.
Neither would exist without massive government-led taxpayer-funded investments, made during an era when inequality was far lower than it is today.
Neither would exist without massive government-led taxpayer-funded investments, made during an era when inequality was far lower than it is today.
All of that foundational work happened when the top marginal tax rates were much higher, showing that “don’t tax rich people so they can fund innovation” is too simple a thesis to be correct.
And of course literally any company is based on the whole history of technology.
You might say that SpaceX only exists because rich people in China wanted to see fireworks (and there was likely state involvement).
But equally does SpaceX depend on a long existing private market and centuries of private investment into manufacturing, incremental improvement in all related technologies and millions of experiments and different things tried.
This arguments are kind of tiered by now.
Its true that the way European state bureaucracy works makes companies like SpaceX unlikely. Its equally true that part of US ability to have such company is based on defense spending over the last 100 years.
There are a ton of similar examples — microchips being the most common here — and the point wasn't that everyone should develop their stack from scratch but rather that the original claim that scientific and engineering progress depends on current US levels of inequality just doesn't fit the history. Most people who aren't committed to a particular political position tend to agree that you need both and in the U.S. we've certainly seen a lot of successes from the combined approach, as well as educational levels of inefficiency when the incentives are misaligned.
You can't just pick one piece out of a large number of inventions and say it was the lynchpin.
And carbon fiber also a had huge amount of development from commercial companies to drive it into 100s of applications. The total amount of investment in carbon fiber is dwarfed 100-1000x compared to government investment. Both are required to actually drive a technology forward consistently.
> the original claim that scientific and engineering progress depends on current US levels of inequality just doesn't fit the history
I don't think that was the claim.
Remember, it was Morse that invented digital telecommunications, and AT&T invented the transistor.
Whenever anyone had two computers, the first thing they'd invent next is a digital protocol to connect them.
Besides, a digital protocol is not the result of "massive government led taxpayer funded investment".
In fact, Morse was supported by Congress to build a demonstration of his telegraph system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Morse):
> Morse made his last trip to Washington, D.C., in December 1842, stringing "wires between two committee rooms in the Capitol, and sent messages back and forth" to demonstrate his telegraph system.[19] Congress appropriated $30,000 (equal to $833,250 today) in 1843 for construction of an experimental 38-mile (61 km) telegraph line between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore along the right-of-way of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.[20] An impressive demonstration occurred on May 1, 1844, when news of the Whig Party's nomination of Henry Clay for U.S. president was telegraphed from the party's convention in Baltimore to the Capitol Building in Washington.[20]
The next line was funded when Morse partnered with Amos Kendall forming the Magnetic Telegraph Company. It built lines from New York to Philadelphia, Boston and Buffalo. Receipts for the first for days on the NY to Philadelphia run was $100. And the telegraph was off and running.
2 years later there was 2,000 miles if wire, and another two years added another 10,000 miles.
The government line proved to be irrelevant, not crucial.
See "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage
The advantages of reducing the size and power requirements of electronics have always been recognized and improvements in it have been ongoing since the first devices.
After all, the transistor was invented by AT&T, not the government.