Major inventions

[John_James]

@The Bomb19

but what incentive would there have been for a firm to initially develop space travel? All that research is far too costly. It needed the government to do it.

Clearly.

Similarly, what incentive would there have been for the private sector to have developed computers initially? These projects would maybe have generated long term revenue i.e. 40 years down the line, but a company which is only interested in short term profits would not have developed the computer in the 1940s or 1950s.

So let me get this straight…your assertion is that a company in the 1940s or 50s wouldn’t be able to make any money from investments in computing technology until the 1980s or 90s. Is that what you’re suggesting? I’d like to be clear.

Why would a firm have built the first satellite or sent a man to the moon? They wouldn’t, because there is no profit to be made. Think about all the inventions and advances in technology that would therefore have been missed. How does the market respond to this?

Again, I want to be clear. You’re asserting that inventions and advances in technology that there is a demand for only exist because money was forcibly taken from people to do things that (according to you) there wasn’t a demand for?

In other words, you’re claiming that there was no profit to be made in building satellite technology or visiting the moon…which by definiton means there is a lack of demand…which in turn means the resources put into it are not worth the value returned. That’s the definiton of “loss”…which is the opposite of “profit”. Your assertion is that doing those things (developing satellites and going to the moon) would have resulted in a loss for a private company…which again, by definition means those things are undesired uses of resources by the market. So you’re basically saying “it’s a good thing a small group of elites used the threat of force to take money from everyone to finance this project that the people didn’t want, because otherwise it wouldn’t have gotten done.”

My question to you is, why does the will of the elite few take precidence over the will of everyone else? Why should everyone be forced to pay for something they clearly (i.e. demonstrably) don’t want? I would be interested to hear your moral justification for this.

I suppose you might refer back to the unspecified “inventions and advances in technology” that supposedly came about as a result of this theft. But again I would ask you, if those things are so valuable…if those things are so in demand, what makes you think they wouldn’t have been invented? You just got through saying money had to be forcibly taken to finance space travel, because otherwise it wouldn’t have happened because it would be unprofitable (again, I’d love to see any proof of that claim)…but even taking your position and assuming space travel is something the market didn’t want, you’re claiming these “inventions and advances in technology” that came out of it are things people did want…as in they are profitable. So, why exactly would something that is profitable not be pursued?