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re Guvmint, I cannot think of a single great invention n the 20th Century that didn't have at least some Government involvement. Radar,Penicillin, the Cell phone, the internet, satellite communications, nuclear power,the microchip, spaceflight,compact computers (All computers for that matter) supersonic aircraft, high speed rail, hovercraft, the pot noodle... Ok, in stretching the point with the Pot Noodle. All of them had at least some Government involvement, usually military. And whilst I'm sure it was all badly developed and cost far more than private enterprise would have done,private enterprise was never willing to take the risk on these things till they are already developed.

 

If we are going to develop green energy, it's going to take Goverment investment, because private investment, time and again,only gets on dead certs.

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Posted (edited)

re Guvmint, I cannot think of a single great invention n the 20th Century that didn't have at least some Government involvement. Radar,Penicillin, the Cell phone, the internet, satellite communications, nuclear power,the microchip, spaceflight,compact computers (All computers for that matter) supersonic aircraft, high speed rail, hovercraft, the pot noodle... Ok, in stretching the point with the Pot Noodle. All of them had at least some Government involvement, usually military. And whilst I'm sure it was all badly developed and cost far more than private enterprise would have done,private enterprise was never willing to take the risk on these things till they are already developed.

 

If we are going to develop green energy, it's going to take Goverment investment, because private investment, time and again,only gets on dead certs.

How many new technologies were never developed because the government siphoned a very large chunk of GDP out of the economy every year for the last century (never mind the sea of regulations the private sector has to navigate, at a very high cost) and squandered it? We will never know.

 

Oh yes, but we did get Tang.

Edited by Mikel2
Posted

 

re Guvmint, I cannot think of a single great invention n the 20th Century that didn't have at least some Government involvement. Radar,Penicillin, the Cell phone, the internet, satellite communications, nuclear power,the microchip, spaceflight,compact computers (All computers for that matter) supersonic aircraft, high speed rail, hovercraft, the pot noodle... Ok, in stretching the point with the Pot Noodle. All of them had at least some Government involvement, usually military. And whilst I'm sure it was all badly developed and cost far more than private enterprise would have done,private enterprise was never willing to take the risk on these things till they are already developed.

 

If we are going to develop green energy, it's going to take Goverment investment, because private investment, time and again,only gets on dead certs.

How many new technologies were never developed because the government siphoned a very large chunk of GDP out of the economy every year for the last century (never mind the sea of regulations the private sector has to navigate, at a very high cost) and squandered it? We will never know.

 

Oh yes, but we did get Tang.

 

Quite a lot. But you are missing the point, we dont know what was lost because the Government screwed up procurement of new technologies (Nuclear propulsion for aircraft perhaps being one, SST being another), but we do know what we DO have from investment in cold war technology. Which is most of the modern world. In fact, I do wonder if that is part of the reason Europe and America have lost their way since the cold war ended. That drive for new technologies is only bankrolled by one Government, China. Why do you think the US Government is so pissed at Huawei? Its not just spyware they are fighting against here, its losing the technological lead they took for granted.

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment? I struggle to think of once since the Victorian era. So the idea that somehow there being lower taxation would increase private development doesnt stack up. There is plenty of money in private hands out there. But there is not the new technology coming forward for them to develop, largely because new developments are so technically demanding only a nation (or in the case of various atomic programs, a group of several nations) can afford to develop them. Evidence is that private equity is just not going to speculate in possible new technolgies. Military's and Governments are and do.

 

Here is an example, British Reaction Engines, a project to develop an airbreating engine that can convert into a rocket at altitude. Its only still goiing as a project because the British Government took a large stake in it (my memory suggests 50 percent, but I wont swear to that). Its ONLY when they did that, that BAE and Boeing took shares in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines_Limited

Posted

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment? I struggle to think of once since the Victorian era. So the idea that somehow there being lower taxation would increase private development doesnt stack up. There is plenty of money in private hands out there. But there is not the new technology coming forward for them to develop, largely because new developments are so technically demanding only a nation (or in the case of various atomic programs, a group of several nations) can afford to develop them. Evidence is that private equity is just not going to speculate in possible new technolgies. Military's and Governments are and do.

 

Here is an example, British Reaction Engines, a project to develop an airbreating engine that can convert into a rocket at altitude. Its only still goiing as a project because the British Government took a large stake in it (my memory suggests 50 percent, but I wont swear to that). Its ONLY when they did that, that BAE and Boeing took shares in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines_Limited

 

Heavier than air flight? AM Radio? Transistors? Affordable personal computers? Cinematography with sound? Color (colour) cinematography? Television? Color (colour) television? Smartphones?

 

Was it the British government or a private newspaper that, in 1908, offered up the English Channel Crossing Prize?

 

Tell, us, Stuart. What government bureaucrat thought that what the world needed was a portable computer, small enough to fit in your vest pocket, and powerful enough to, among other things, send and receive live real time imaging? What government bureaucrat thought that up, engineered it, marketed it, and put it in production?

 

As for Reaction Engines, as I understand it the initial ideas, proposals, and engineering started as a private venture, but it's really hard to tell with the incestuous relationship between the British Government and private businesses. Going on for over thirty years and still looking for a craft to use the unproven technology. Were I a decision maker at Boeing, I'd jump at a chance for the British government to pay me big money to work on a never ending project.

Posted

​​The computer was born not for entertainment or email but out of a need to solve a serious number-crunching crisis. By 1880, the U.S. population had grown so large that it took more than seven years to tabulate the U.S. Census results. The government sought a faster way to get the job done, giving rise to punch-card based computers that took up entire rooms.

Posted (edited)

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment?

 

 

Heavier than air flight. Telephones. Electric systems (AC/DC). Internal combustion engines.

Edited by Tim Sielbeck
Posted

Photography. Television. Radio. Rubber. Haber-Bosch nitrogen synthesis. Automobiles.

Posted (edited)

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment?

 

 

Heavier than air flight. Telephones. Electric systems (AC/DC). Internal combustion engines.

 

All privately developed, ill grant you. Would they have come to prominence without WW1 and subsequent military investment in? Look at the Wright Flyer. In 1903 we can just get the thing in the air. In 1909 we are just at the limits of getting to the ability to fly across the Channel. By 1918 they have long range multi engined bombers that can, the following year, cross the atlantic.

https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/first-transatlantic-flight-john-alcock-arthur-whitten-brown-aviation-century-later-500418

 

 

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment? I struggle to think of once since the Victorian era. So the idea that somehow there being lower taxation would increase private development doesnt stack up. There is plenty of money in private hands out there. But there is not the new technology coming forward for them to develop, largely because new developments are so technically demanding only a nation (or in the case of various atomic programs, a group of several nations) can afford to develop them. Evidence is that private equity is just not going to speculate in possible new technolgies. Military's and Governments are and do.

 

Here is an example, British Reaction Engines, a project to develop an airbreating engine that can convert into a rocket at altitude. Its only still goiing as a project because the British Government took a large stake in it (my memory suggests 50 percent, but I wont swear to that). Its ONLY when they did that, that BAE and Boeing took shares in it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines_Limited

 

Heavier than air flight? AM Radio? Transistors? Affordable personal computers? Cinematography with sound? Color (colour) cinematography? Television? Color (colour) television? Smartphones?

 

Was it the British government or a private newspaper that, in 1908, offered up the English Channel Crossing Prize?

 

Tell, us, Stuart. What government bureaucrat thought that what the world needed was a portable computer, small enough to fit in your vest pocket, and powerful enough to, among other things, send and receive live real time imaging? What government bureaucrat thought that up, engineered it, marketed it, and put it in production?

 

As for Reaction Engines, as I understand it the initial ideas, proposals, and engineering started as a private venture, but it's really hard to tell with the incestuous relationship between the British Government and private businesses. Going on for over thirty years and still looking for a craft to use the unproven technology. Were I a decision maker at Boeing, I'd jump at a chance for the British government to pay me big money to work on a never ending project.

 

Affordable personal computers come down to size. The miniturization of the computer really occurred with the Apollo AGC, which rewrote the book on a size a computer could be. When Nixon cancelled the Apollo program, many of the people who worked on the NASA computer project settled in the California area. The guy restoring one on youtube makes the plausible case the AGC is the start of Silicon valley. All down to Guvmint money, not least because there were already a lot of companies and universities for that matter in the area, all a fall out of cold war military spending on defence projects, not least radar.

 

 

 

Internal combustion engines, look at how the development of the submarine kick started the development of the diesel. In fact in the US, the Department of the Navy had some scheme with US Railroad Companies to buy diesel powered loco's. Just to push forward the techology for the propulsion of their submarines. I gather Fairbanks Morse, who build a lot of engines for US Submarines, also build them for many diesel power trains.

 

Re Telephones, where I live we only got electricity and a telephone line when we did because someone in WW2 built an airfield alongside us. Wars didnt start those products, but they certainly sped up their adoption/. Think of how many trucks and ambulances got other lives at the end of WW1 and 2.

 

Reaction engines, sure it was a private idea. But its had Government investment as I point to above. Look at it like this, do you serious thing Steve Bezo's, Elon Musk and Richard Branson would be fooling around with Rocketry, if NASA, the US Military and ultimately the Nazi's hadnt paved the way for them first? Rocketry in Germany was a novelty, a Toy, till the Wehrmacht started throwing money at it. Ditto nuclear power. It would be nowhere today, if people had not thrown millions at developing a bomb first.

 

Television, you know the Nazi's threw money into developing that for propaganda purposes. Cinematography, ill give you that. But Cinematography was a victorian invention, sound was what, 25 or so years later? And who records on film these days anyway?

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted

That war accelerates the pushing of technological envelopes, and that companies producing war materiél seek ways to apply their know-how after a war to the civilian market, is indisputable. In other news: Water still wet. The state has enormous purchasing power, and that also gives him the ability to enforce standards (like "clutch left, brake in the middle, gas pedal to the right"). So when it comes to scaling up an invention to industrial production state investment provides the needed risk mitigating guarantees that help industrialists to make large scale investments. But that doesn't mean that the state is involved with the actual invention process, and this wasn't mentioned in your original question:

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment?

Posted (edited)

 

That war accelerates the pushing of technological envelopes, and that companies producing war materiél seek ways to apply their know-how after a war to the civilian market, is indisputable. In other news: Water still wet. The state has enormous purchasing power, and that also gives him the ability to enforce standards (like "clutch left, brake in the middle, gas pedal to the right"). So when it comes to scaling up an invention to industrial production state investment provides the needed risk mitigating guarantees that help industrialists to make large scale investments. But that doesn't mean that the state is involved with the actual invention process, and this wasn't mentioned in your original question:

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment?

 

Well, look at what I said. Can anyone think of an entirely new technology thought up, developed and put into production purely by private investment? If there is ANY involvement by Government, either investing in a promising product for military purposes, or just trying to help development of new technology, the answer has to be no. For example, AI driven cars. Most of that is now private investment. But the initial drive for the project was IIRC, DARPA, looking into AI vehicles to replace human drivers in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq where many of them were ambushed. That is a clear example whre, if the military had not taken the lead, there would be no project. Nobody was willing to put the money in till Government expressed a need for it.

 

You say, well this isnt news. Maybe it isnt, but how often do people think when they are using their cell phone, its a development of military technology? The first example of a mobile phone was on a Germany military train in 1918. But it didnt really develop until what we know today with developments in WW2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones

 

There are loads of these. We assume, blindly, this is just private investment thinking up all these things, or developing them from something a guy cooked up in his garages. In the victorian era, yes, there were many, many examples of that. Now? Thats very rare. And naturally so, because technology is so sophisticated, its not viable for a single individual to think them up, and apply for a loan to develop it. The world simply does not work like that anymore. Well ok, there are occasions, the Black and Decker workmate, or the guy who invented the Clockwork Radio. But now, its increasingly rare without some kind of Government involvement.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted

When you speak of technology in the broadest terms you will almost always find a trace to a military application. But that doesn't mean that the underlying technologies wouldn't have made it without state involvement. State involvement accelerated the adoption.

 

 

Telephone. Was developed entirely without state involvement by a doctor with a deaf wife, trying to find a way to help her. DIdn't work out, but he found something else in the process. Telephone was then adopted by stock market brokers in New York who wanted to know the prices of pork halves in Kansas, and by reporters phoning their stories to the editors. These were application cases where the initial investment would pay off soonest. THEN comes war and the need for generals to talk to the guys at the front, for forward observers and whatnot. So production of field telephones is accelerated, and field switchboards. and then, after the war, thanks to large scale production for armies, the production capacities have been inflated (and already been paid for) so that the mass market is the next attractive target. So you make "phone at home" a status symbol or a business necessity, and then the network effect adds momentum and phone is adapted quickly at least in the population centers.

 

That it took the military to bring electricity and phones to your village is a nice anecdote but it doesn't support your theory that without the government your village would have never gotten it. It would have taken longer. Pretty much all infrastructure follows demand. Where most people are or where is a large industrial plant, infrastructure development starts first. Just look at how railway lines grew to connect the biggest industrial hubs first, entirely without government intervention. The government steps in when it needs railway lines to military assembly areas which would otherwise be completely uninteresting.

Posted

Tanks.

Invented privately, foisted on the military against great resistance. They would have happily sent wave after wave of young men into machinegun fire until one side ran out of men. So, sure, they are pure military technology and without a war and without governments we wouldn't see them, but it's not as if governments solicited the invention of protected mobile firepower in an open bid process. Or that governments said, "gee, I wish we could drop bombs on our enemy with precision, but without the need for forward observers" and then tasked the Wright broters to invent the bomber. Orville and Wilbur looked at birds and said, "I wish I could fly", and then were lucky enough to give it a try (like countless pioneers before them) at a point where other key technologies - mainly the internal combustion engine - just crossed the threshold to make it feasible at all.

 

Yes, your timeline is correct:

In 1903 we can just get the thing in the air. In 1909 we are just at the limits of getting to the ability to fly across the Channel.

 

But that's merely six years from 50 meters to 50 kilometers. Private venture would soon enough have allowed for 500 kilometers, and with it, real-world application cases. If you want long distance bombers and fighter planes you need a government. Fast passenger transportation and air mail do not require governmental involvement. Yes, at some point its involvement is inevitable because governments are about power, they want to meddle in everything. But that's not the same as a necessary ingredient.

Posted

Split this off. Thread derailing is a TankNet specialty only because we let it happen.

Posted (edited)

You missed one.

 

Well we clearly live in an era of accelerated technological development, which has, if you stop to think, really started in the 1950's (you can arguably say the 1940's in that some of the developments came from then) and continued up to the eventual boom of the electronic revolution in the 1990's. Its difficult for me not to see that Cold War investment played a large role in that acceleration.

 

Yes, many of those would eventually have come to be, particularly where there was a clear need, and there was people willing to put private capital into it. But that still implies private enterprise is a slow, unwieldy, and uncertain way of developing technology. So sometimes is Government, but the trend since the 1950's, and particularly since the 1990's has clearly been lightning fast. I suspect, but ive no way to prove, the reason why its accelerated since the 80s and 90's is that private AND Government were putting money into developing similar things. Cellular Communications, computer technology, all these things are of equal interest to Government and private enterprise.

 

Railways, well that is a neat illustration of some of what Im saying. In the UK its perfectly true, there was no Government intervention, at all. Thats how we ended up with 20 thousand miles of track, only about half of it directly relevant to what was actually needed. That was private enterprise at work, and it was slow, stupid, and mostly directionless in large part.

In Europe, it didnt work that way at all. Most of the railway lines were approved and developed with military applications in mind. Your country for example, invested in Railways so it could send armies east and west with the shortest possible lines, and yes, im sure industrial development played a role. But it was not necessarily the primary role.

This is also true in Belgium and France. Those lines therefore clearly WOULD have existed, eventually. But there would have been a lot of unnecessary cost in developing ancillary lines competing with each other, and going to places ultimately people didnt want to go, and the length of time it took to develop them. For example, Britain didnt finish its last main line till about 1905, this is something like 75 years or more after the railway network started to be built! Which considering what a small island this is, is pretty extraordinary. This is a legacy Britain still struggles with to this day. There is a good case also for saying that the development of electrification was also slow in Britain for precisely the same reasons. In fact, which was nationalised prewar, they had made some advances in electrification. So I gather did your country, hence why the French managed to get their hands on 25AC from liberated Germany.

 

 

The title im not entirely happy with. Yes, sometimes the Government invents things that would have no other application if they didnt pay for it. Such as the Atomic bomb, and the spun off technologies in nuclear power. There are others that might, probably even, have existed eventually. There are those that had been invented, privately, but Government, for political or military applications, sped up development. A good example of the latter would be the private development of the Turbinia, which developed the technology that eventually made it into the warship that defined its era, HMS Dreadnought.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbinia

 

A better title would be 'Does Government speed up technological development and sometimes invents'. And very clearly it can, and often does.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted (edited)

Easy comparison. how many new products and designs in the USSR? All government development, all the time. Compare to the US or Japan. If the key factor is government funding, then the USSR should be head and shoulders above the capitalist west for sheer volume and variety.

 

Or we can look at British small arms development. Compare to the US. obviously, British government funded small arms development is head and shoulders above the largely civilian and private development across the pond. Look at the withering success the SA80 has been.

Edited by rmgill
Posted (edited)

The USSR didn't innovate new technology though did it? Other than Sputnik, everything it developed in large part was from nicking it and buying it from the west. When the west discovered what the USSRneeded, and cut it off, the Soviets economy, such as it was, collapsed.

 

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farewell_Dossier

 

Besides, there was no really independent civilian economy to take advantage of such advances as were made. There is also the suspicion state secrecy would not have quickly let them know, even when they did make advances. It's not as if the Soviet bureaucracy saw opportunities when they were under their nose. Look at the source of the algorithms that led to stealth technology.

 

As for small arms, ook up what happened to Sterling. That was privately owned, and Guvmint failed to bail them out.Ditto BSA.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted

Stuart, your original assertion was that no new invention was made since the Victorian age that did not have crucial government involvement. That claim has been soundly debunked, and as far as I can see you're already in goal post shifting mode. It's fine to move on in a discussion, but please admit just once that your original statement was both very bold and very wrong.

Posted (edited)

 

re Guvmint, I cannot think of a single great invention n the 20th Century that didn't have at least some Government involvement. Radar,Penicillin, the Cell phone, the internet, satellite communications, nuclear power,the microchip, spaceflight,compact computers (All computers for that matter) supersonic aircraft, high speed rail, hovercraft, the pot noodle... Ok, in stretching the point with the Pot Noodle. All of them had at least some Government involvement, usually military. And whilst I'm sure it was all badly developed and cost far more than private enterprise would have done,private enterprise was never willing to take the risk on these things till they are already developed.

 

If we are going to develop green energy, it's going to take Goverment investment, because private investment, time and again,only gets on dead certs.

How many new technologies were never developed because the government siphoned a very large chunk of GDP out of the economy every year for the last century (never mind the sea of regulations the private sector has to navigate, at a very high cost) and squandered it? We will never know.

 

Oh yes, but we did get Tang.

 

 

Sorry to chip in.

 

We do know: none. If something is so hot, a private entrepreneur elsewhere will pick it up and run with it: See Steve Jobs and the Xerox PARC

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4jvZtZTTCc

 

https://zurb.com/blog/steve-jobs-and-xerox-the-truth-about-inno

Edited by RETAC21
Posted

With the prolific arms market in the UK, why would BSA or Sterling need a bailout?

 

Compare that to the wasteland that is the US arms industry. Clearly, without government, no innovation can happen. The profusion of accessories for the SA80 is testament to that.

Posted

 

re Guvmint, I cannot think of a single great invention n the 20th Century that didn't have at least some Government involvement. Radar,Penicillin, the Cell phone, the internet, satellite communications, nuclear power,the microchip, spaceflight,compact computers (All computers for that matter) supersonic aircraft, high speed rail, hovercraft, the pot noodle... Ok, in stretching the point with the Pot Noodle. All of them had at least some Government involvement, usually military. And whilst I'm sure it was all badly developed and cost far more than private enterprise would have done,private enterprise was never willing to take the risk on these things till they are already developed.

 

If we are going to develop green energy, it's going to take Goverment investment, because private investment, time and again,only gets on dead certs.

How many new technologies were never developed because the government siphoned a very large chunk of GDP out of the economy every year for the last century (never mind the sea of regulations the private sector has to navigate, at a very high cost) and squandered it? We will never know.

 

Oh yes, but we did get Tang.

 

Not really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink_mix)

Posted

With the prolific arms market in the UK, why would BSA or Sterling need a bailout?

 

Compare that to the wasteland that is the US arms industry. Clearly, without government, no innovation can happen. The profusion of accessories for the SA80 is testament to that.

 

That arms industry comes at the cost of all the domestic problems widespread availability of military style guns cause in the US. We don't want that here, and therefore are happy to purchase those small arms we need (other than sniper rifles) abroad. I would be interested to know how much the US small arms industry contributes to the US economy vs how much the weapons they produce detract from it through the harm they inflict, both directly and indirectly.

 

Taking the USSR as your example, government did not as you correctly state, produce massive variety, but it did produce what are generally regarded as very good guns - the AK was unarguably better than the government designed M14 and on a par with the civilian designed AR. The PKM was better than the M60 (government designed) and arguably better than the MAG (privately designed).

Posted (edited)

Stuart, your original assertion was that no new invention was made since the Victorian age that did not have crucial government involvement. That claim has been soundly debunked, and as far as I can see you're already in goal post shifting mode. It's fine to move on in a discussion, but please admit just once that your original statement was both very bold and very wrong.

Please, read again what I said.

 

Can anyone think of an entirely new technology that was thought up, developed, and put into production by purely private investment?

 

I talk about the development of new technologies. A new fridge freezer that can do the job on half the power is a new invention. AI driving is a new technology field. You may say that a arbitrarily defined, but it isnt. The first is a development of previously existing technologies. The latter is an entirely different branch.I

 

I also said this.

 

I cannot think of a single great invention in the 20th Century that didn't have at least some Government involvement.

 

Which was perhaps carelessly said. But what I was trying to illustrate is that I cannot thing of life changing examples. A new fridge freezer or black and Decker workmate, for me at least, is not life changing. A desktop computer from one that filled a room is.

 

I've offered many examples. I've not heard one that was not a development of previous ones, most dating from the great period of entrepreneurship before WW1. All the rest had government or military involvement, as I suggest.

 

This is not gear shifting, it's an honest view. You must take it or leave it.

Edited by Stuart Galbraith
Posted

You've moved the goalposts from "nothing but the government" to "any bit of government".

 

Just stop, you're a parody of yourself at this point.

Posted

Look, I offered an opinion, you disagree and that's fine by me. I don't believe I moved any goalposts other than by describing what I think.

 

Parody I may be, but I hope I don't descend to ridiculing others when I disagree with them. There is far too much of that in here.

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