More accurate to say "governments are more innovative than corporations."
Nonsense. If that were true, then government wouldn't contract so much of their "innovation" out to corporations. I used to work for a corporation that did a lot of this "government innovation", and the primary role of government was to figure out which corporation would do the innovating, make sure it got done, and then to pay them.
Our biggest competitors were other corporations. Yes, we had some competition from government labs, but not much. We and our corporate competitors could create whole new staffed divisions in a half-dozen promising areas in the time it took a government lab to argue over whether to use this year's budget on a new framatron or a pizza oven.
We also had some competition from research universities, but even there, the public universities were hardly more "innovative" than MIT, Caltech, Stanford...the private corporations.
Some of the things we came up with at taxpayer expense were worthless. What could taxpayers have come up with if their money hadn't been confiscated and given to us? Some of the things were valuable (I think), but nothing that we couldn't have produced if paid by companies (as we often were) instead of a government agency.
And all this stuff about how we owe the Internet to government is hooey. It's as if packet switching could only have been invented by someone paid with confiscated tax dollars. People who were paid by non-coerced customer revenues could never have thought of it, and if the government hadn't invented it, it wouldn't exist today.
Just because the government had its fingers in something doesn't mean it played a necessary role. It tends to stick its fingers into nearly everything, but that doesn't mean it plays a useful role in more than a few of them. Most of those innovations where the government was first to do something would have been done just as well not long after by someone else if the demand for it were real (people voluntarily spending their own money) and not just political.
You seem to ignore the extremely important point that the government contracts its innovation out to corporations as a means to keep the economy going. That's what keeps the machine turning, friend.
The Wizard of Oz keeps a big machine turning, but that machine isn't really running the kingdom, despite all that smoke and noise and imperial pomp. The imperial palace is merely the largest and possibly least productive participant. The real economy is the unfathomably complex interaction of billions of parties deciding what to make for whom, what to spend on what, what to study, where to live.... The big, clumsy oaf that often takes their money by force without trading anything for it, offers them others' money in exchange for votes, sometimes creates useful infrastructure that helps the real economy be more productive then comes up with new ways to impede their productivity (hiring people who are unfit to produce, telling them to regulate producers, and pointing at the newly hired regulators as a "jobs creation success story")..., that oaf is not keeping the economy going. It's just a big, clumsy participant, but people who can't fathom complex adaptive systems assume the biggest node must be in charge. Yours is a child's view of an economy, friend.
What nonsense. You've way overcooked your metaphor.
Way to read your own ideologies into my simple statement. It's unnecessarily arrogant to think you can glean so much from a two-sentence remark on your attempt to belittle state-based innovation and oversimplification of reasons behind contracting corporations for state needs. Nothing in my simple statement precluded recognition of economic complexities or suggested the state was in charge.
We can disagree all day long, and you can go about your business suggesting the state is a monstrous oaf stealing money from people with jack-booted thugs, giving it away to get votes, and the persons from whom they stole the cash got absolutely nothing out of the 'theft'--but piss off with this patronizing bullshit of calling a different view that of a child.
You've heavily laden a ridiculously partisan view of economy with a ridiculously partisan view of the state, and ultimately say nothing helpful or enlightening.
For someone who allegedly sits so high above, fathoming complex adaptive systems, you sure relegate the state to a role of simplicity and hand-waving, touting garbage as incontrovertible truths.
The state takes everyone's money by force without trading anything for it? What a useless view that shows no comprehension of political theory and the complex adaptive systems we establish in social and political institutions as actors who engage and transact.
Nonsense. If that were true, then government wouldn't contract so much of their "innovation" out to corporations. I used to work for a corporation that did a lot of this "government innovation", and the primary role of government was to figure out which corporation would do the innovating, make sure it got done, and then to pay them.
Our biggest competitors were other corporations. Yes, we had some competition from government labs, but not much. We and our corporate competitors could create whole new staffed divisions in a half-dozen promising areas in the time it took a government lab to argue over whether to use this year's budget on a new framatron or a pizza oven.
We also had some competition from research universities, but even there, the public universities were hardly more "innovative" than MIT, Caltech, Stanford...the private corporations.
Some of the things we came up with at taxpayer expense were worthless. What could taxpayers have come up with if their money hadn't been confiscated and given to us? Some of the things were valuable (I think), but nothing that we couldn't have produced if paid by companies (as we often were) instead of a government agency.
And all this stuff about how we owe the Internet to government is hooey. It's as if packet switching could only have been invented by someone paid with confiscated tax dollars. People who were paid by non-coerced customer revenues could never have thought of it, and if the government hadn't invented it, it wouldn't exist today.
Just because the government had its fingers in something doesn't mean it played a necessary role. It tends to stick its fingers into nearly everything, but that doesn't mean it plays a useful role in more than a few of them. Most of those innovations where the government was first to do something would have been done just as well not long after by someone else if the demand for it were real (people voluntarily spending their own money) and not just political.