I’m not persuaded by the parallel between the deleterious effects of automotive transport and the potential for inequity from computer developments. I agree that with hindsight cars were a disaster for a host of reasons not just environmental degradation. For example the waste of land for roads is irksome to me. But where I disagree is your suggestion that investment should be channeled for public benefit. That means government and governments do not have the ability to see what is needed.
Hi Robert, thanks for your comment! I think when an argument like mine is made, the tendency is to reduce the alternatives to monoliths that create incomplete perceptions. Like businesses, governments are made of people. While many tend to presume private companies possess people of greater qualifications to make expert decisions, I suppose based on the difference in potential income, the evidence for this is not exceptionally strong. Most Nobel laureates, for instance, came from institutions where pay rates are routinely lower. Moreover, some of the most successful scientific and technological advances were primarily developed in government operated organizations--the space program, military tech, and medicine, to name a few. NASA remains, in my view, one of the most technologically and scientifically adept organizations in the history of the world, even in its currently somewhat degraded state. Thus, I do not agree that private business is any better situated than organizations with the public benefit as their primary motivator to make decisions about commodities that affect the public.
You are not wrong. Musk is the exemplar par excellence to illustrate the adverse effects of private enterprise. I don’t quite know how but NASA must have meekly surrendered their technology to him. The profit motive is over rated as the economic locomotive. In the past science advanced because people wanted it to not because they had dollar signs in their eyes.
I’m not persuaded by the parallel between the deleterious effects of automotive transport and the potential for inequity from computer developments. I agree that with hindsight cars were a disaster for a host of reasons not just environmental degradation. For example the waste of land for roads is irksome to me. But where I disagree is your suggestion that investment should be channeled for public benefit. That means government and governments do not have the ability to see what is needed.
Hi Robert, thanks for your comment! I think when an argument like mine is made, the tendency is to reduce the alternatives to monoliths that create incomplete perceptions. Like businesses, governments are made of people. While many tend to presume private companies possess people of greater qualifications to make expert decisions, I suppose based on the difference in potential income, the evidence for this is not exceptionally strong. Most Nobel laureates, for instance, came from institutions where pay rates are routinely lower. Moreover, some of the most successful scientific and technological advances were primarily developed in government operated organizations--the space program, military tech, and medicine, to name a few. NASA remains, in my view, one of the most technologically and scientifically adept organizations in the history of the world, even in its currently somewhat degraded state. Thus, I do not agree that private business is any better situated than organizations with the public benefit as their primary motivator to make decisions about commodities that affect the public.
You are not wrong. Musk is the exemplar par excellence to illustrate the adverse effects of private enterprise. I don’t quite know how but NASA must have meekly surrendered their technology to him. The profit motive is over rated as the economic locomotive. In the past science advanced because people wanted it to not because they had dollar signs in their eyes.
Don't get me started on the direction NASA has gone! ;)
Anyway I liked your essay even if the science is beyond me.