
The Government Once Built Silicon Valley - sgy
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/04/the-government-once-built-silicon-valley/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb
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andrewtbham
If you're interested in more details about the government's early involvement
check out steve blank's secret history of silicon valley. it's fascinating.

[http://steveblank.com/secret-history/](http://steveblank.com/secret-history/)

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ABS
I also quite enjoyed Prof. Mazzucato's The Entrepreneurial State:

"This book debunks the myth of a dynamic private sector vs. a sluggish public
sector by providing a detailed account of the role of the public sector in
taking on high-risk entrepreneurial investments, from the Internet to the
‘green revolution’."

The book is more thorough but you can get a lot also out of the free pamphlet
available here
[http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theentrepreneurialstate](http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/theentrepreneurialstate)

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WalterBright
Nobody remembers FidoNet.

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wslh
I do ;-)

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WalterBright
I meant that people assume the internet would not have existed if the
government didn't create the Arpanet. FidoNet demonstrates otherwise.

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lmg643
These articles are accurate. Of course - can we also agree that the US
Government post WW-2, coming off the largest war-time mobilization in history,
is not the same government we have today?

To say that the government had a huge hand in silicon valley, and thus all
government efforts to produce commerce and innovation are going to have equal
results, confuses the issue. (not to mention the universities have changed
too). Which I think is the point of most of these pieces.

~~~
coldtea
I'm more confused now. So what is the major change from the era of "post WWII"
and how that affect attemps of "government efforts to produce commerce and
innovation"?

Nobody said it "always works" \-- it's enough to say that if it worked then,
it could also work now.

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adventured
There have been a lot of changes. One of which is that America can no longer
do cost-effective public works, paid for via government funds. The government
used to be able to spur all sorts of economic gains that way, from huge dams
generating cheap electricity to the interstate highway system. Now we vaporize
$800 billion (ARRA stimulus program) and barely get anything for it.

The only thing in this category the government seems to be able to afford
these days (other than lots of wasted military spending), is scientific
research funding.

Another huge difference is that America has taken on truly massive
liabilities, from public debt to entitlements, that did not exist in 1948.
Those entitlement obligations alone will squeeze the government's budget to
death over the next 20 years. That leaves a lot less money for everything
else.

As an economic burden, healthcare has become a huge portion of the economy and
government spending compared to 1948, and will remain substantial no matter
how they cut and squeeze costs in the coming years. That money can't be spent
on bridges, roads, electrical grids, research, etc. It also doesn't help that
Americans overall have been much less healthy in terms of diet in the last 50
or 60 years, contributing substantially to that increase in healthcare costs
(helped by the government subsidizing things like sugar and corn, and
promoting really stupid food pyramids).

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nerfhammer
US federal debt in 1948 easily dwarfs the current federal debt as a % of GDP,
as a result of war spending

Granted ongoing liabilities are a different thing than war bonds

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benihana
It's like you skimmed the entire comment, saw the thing about debt and then
commented on something completely tangential to the point GP was making. The
point was how much we spend, the point was the government in 1948 was a
completely different beast than it is today. American society was also
completely different.

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Uhhrrr
I had to scroll down 7 comments (on the TC site) to find someone who wasn't
pointing out inaccuracies in this article.

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sgy
You can please some of the people, some of the time

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SahAssar
_" 1 billion consumers worldwide will enter the middle class in the next 15
years – 80% of this growth will be outside of the U.S."_

Saying that 200 million Americans will enter the middle class in the next 15
years might be worth pointing out though. Where is he getting that statistic?!

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Uhhrrr
The only way I can figure it is if at least 100 million leave the middle class
first.

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hkmurakami
If you define middle class solely by income (rather than accumulated wealth),
and consider them "middle class" just from one year's worth of middle class
level income (an abberation, basically), then this may be perhaps possible?

I remember there was an article on HN that described such "income churn" for
the population, and it was tremendous how people enter and exit mid to high
income ranges throughout their lives.

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unpaiddeveloper
I question the author's integrity (Vitaly M. Golomb). I worked for one of his
startups once briefly and was never paid. I was awarded a judgement but was
unable to collect it.

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schnable
Does it cost more money to teach math and science? Or are other factors at
play? Education budgets may have been cut over the past few years but in real
dollars, they are _significantly_ larger than they were in the '50s, '60s, and
even the '90s. So is willingness to spend a problem? Or are we spending on the
wrong things?

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sgloutnikov
I enjoyed Silicon Valley: A Five Part Series. Worth a shot if you are into
these kinds of documentaries.
[http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!silicon-valley-
film...](http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/#!silicon-valley-film/c1hkf)

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asadlionpk
I learned that history through this video some time ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo)

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adventured
Pretty terrible article as others have pointed out.

You can tell immediately by the quality of the statistics they attempt to sell
the premise with, for example:

"95% of the world’s consumers live outside of the U.S."

And ~20% of the world's consumption by dollar value occurs in the U.S. It's
likely 1/3 of the world's population won't be meaningful consumers in this
century. The 95% number - based on population of all things - is entirely
worthless.

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Pacabel
A century is a rather long time. We only have to look at the past century to
see how significantly economic conditions can change. Massive social and
economic change on a global scale can happen within even just half a century.

So I'd be very, very hesitant to make a claim like "It's likely 1/3 of the
world's population won't be meaningful consumers in this century."

