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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:22am PT
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time sharing and computer networking are very different things... most time sharing systems involved stringing terminal-keyboard lines to a single central computer. The art there was how to have a multi-user system.
I believe that that was a Dartmouth product.
Having computers communicate to each other over a network similar to what we have today was first done on the ARPANET, with the idea of "servers" and that was accomplished between UCLA and SRI in 1968 or so... not to say that there weren't other ideas out there at the time.
I do believe that the basic architectural concepts that survived were those essentially laid out in the ARPANET implementation...
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:24am PT
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skipt, I used ARPAnet as an undergraduate at UCB to communicate between computer facilities at LBL and SLAC for a High Energy Physics experiment, that was in the early 70s.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:34am PT
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"The example of someone pointing a gun at you and demanding you buy something from them is not the best example of a legitimate business transaction that I could come up with. "
Yeah, what I'm saying is that there are lots of ways that business transactions can happen that aren't legitimate, fueled by lack of regulation to monopoly power.
Everything from the dealings of the World Bank to the mob trash collectors.
PEace
Karl
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:38am PT
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I don't think the government "controlled it" they didn't even know what "it" was until the 90s.
The point is that a lot of government activity looks frivolous and irrelevant at the time it is being done. I can't imagine anybody in commercial interest at the time saying that they could use such a thing. It wasn't until the mid 90s that there was even a viable "business plan" for anyone to use the internet!
Now it is obvious that a few individuals, and then individual institutions had some application in mind for the use of the internet, certainly not in the form that it is used today. And they relied on the USG's investment in advanced R&D, largely unguided, to come up with the funds to actually do it. Where did these funds come from? the revenues from taxes.
This is taking money away from one part of the society and giving to another part... no free market involved here, just ideas. As far as I know, there wasn't even the concept of "Intellectual Property" as broad as we know today... the USG got nothing on licensing internet technology... but we all benefited, and continue to benefit, in that investment.
I'm saying that you can not do away with this inefficiency, it is essential to innovation. The question is who should fund it? business cannot or will not. It is beyond the realm of the free market, in some ways, it is a pre-market entity.
Maybe TiG can educate us on where this sort of thing fits in...
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:39am PT
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http://www.ciadvertising.org/sa/fall_04/adv391k/paroma/Spam/origin.htm DARPA (1962)
In between, real computer network set up by Dartmouth. Used public phone circuits, modems, etc. Sure you can say that there was a computer device and a data terminal device. But that difference persists today as well. Not many true peer-to-peer networks still exist, and probably the first of those were set up (1980s?) with mini-computers after the invention of ether-net invented by Xerox-PARC 1973-1975 time frame. Whoa - private industry? How did that happen?
RFC 1 (1969)
EDIT: hmm. Kemeny, Kurtz... Dartmouth. Maybe they had a government grant, or maybe they just got together and hashed it out and had Peter Kiewit contribute to it.
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:50am PT
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gotta go to bed...
But there was also Bell Labs - Shockley [OT] - transistor
And IBM who funded everything from gravity wave detectors to nano, and probably still does some nano.
Then there was Einstein who funded himself, at least for the most important stuff he ever did.
Then there was the Human Genome Project where the government was losing until they funded the front-runner.
Just off the top of my head here.
Hmm. What about LASER? Hughes... Gov't contract, not sure.
Penicillin?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:51am PT
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TiG, where is the great industrial R&D houses today?
Perhaps changes to the USG tax policy made them unprofitable?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2009 - 01:06am PT
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the "Endless Frontier" of V. Bush, a position paper commissioned by Franklin Roosevelt on the role of government funding of science after WWII was given to Truman, outlined what has become the public science policy for about 60 years now.
One of the recommendations was to give private industry a tax savings incentive to do R&D. I believe this was passed into law in the late 50s, perhaps in response to Sputnik, which was a nasty "technological surprise" that the US was unable to respond to immediately.
The whole tax code was rewritten during the 80s, I believe, and eliminated tax credits for a variety of things (books in stock, for instance, were not counted as "inventory" and thus no tax was paid on them... a change of the tax code in that time period essentially doomed the large book sellers some of us had grown up going to, they simply could not make enough to pay the tax on the books in stock)... in that time period, I believe, the tax credit for R&D activities was modified in such a way that corporations could not afford to support their R&D facilities.
Bell Labs, today, is no more. Who does that research?
Increasingly venture capital is using the research universities as a source of innovation (mostly biotech) which it encourages by supporting spin-off companies off campus which, when successful, are bought by bigger companies in a 5 to 7 year time scale.
Who supports the innovative research at the universities the VC transfers off campus? most of it is the USG, and in biotech, that would be NIH.
There is private money going to university research, which is somewhat controversial now days... but until relatively recently the USG funded much of the research, some of which actually made a profit.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 14, 2009 - 01:45am PT
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I think if you are going to hold up Bell Labs as the example of "private industry" initiative and "free market" forces, that you have to acknowledge the USG played a big role in defining the "free market."
The idea of the 80s tax reform was to "level the playing field" which was not necessarily a good idea if you think Bell Labs was an important institution that should have been preserved. The fact is, Bell Labs, and other such industrial R&D labs, depended on a form of government subside, a tax break in this case... all things being equal (as they are now) industry did not choose to preserve the R&D. If the field was level because there were no taxes, I assert that industry would still not support R&D.
They supported it because the derived an advantage, lower taxes, from the USG. Which is precisely the intent of that particular policy as laid out in 1945. It worked wonderfully.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jan 14, 2009 - 02:00am PT
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Which is worse?
A. A debate between political science geeks about Ayn Rand.
B. A debate between geeks about the origins of the internet.
C. A debate between geeks about political science.
D. A debate between political science geeks about the origins of the internet.
E. A debate between people who are neither, about both.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 14, 2009 - 02:04am PT
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"The world bank and mob trash collectors are hardly examples of Free Enterprise."
Free enterprise has to hire security to protect their interests.
One enterprise charges WAY too much to collect the trash and the sister organization promises to break the legs of any other company collecting trash in the area.
The world bank makes the loans and then specifies how money must be used. Often coincides with multinationals sucking of the money doing big projects or privatizing resources. Then the indebted country can't pay so they have to follow orders henceforth.
Citibank just raised the interest rates on many credit card customers from 8% to 16% even as interest rates have fallen to record levels. If you can't pay off your card, you're stuck with paying twice as much. If you can't pay the new minimums, you get a default rate of almost 30%. No negotiation involved. No value changed. When a business can get you into a tight spot, they can screw you at will.
Checks and Balances are good for government and Business as well. The Board of Directors are supposed to be a check on the CEOs and COOs but too often these days they are in bed together.
Peace
Karl
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Jan 14, 2009 - 07:37am PT
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Hey Ed, how about linking to that map
or squeezing it down. Getting hard to
read the posts with the scroll bar.
F. Canadians LEBifying.
:-)
Karl, last I heard, you could pay off a
credit card without any advance notice.
The card company has to notify you before
they can raise the rates. Sounds like a
free market to me.
Free markets do not mean that you have
to be smart enough to do what is best, or
that even, if you are, that you do. It only
means that you have a choice and that the
information available to participants is
freely available. It does not mean that you
go get it, or read it.
Karl, unlike places like Canada, and most of
the rest of the free world, this country
has thousands of banks. You don't like Citi's
rate, go to a competitor. If you don't like any
of the rates, don't borrow. Credit cards are
not fixed rate mortgages. Everybody knows that
when they start borrowing.
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dirtbag
climber
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Jan 14, 2009 - 11:35am PT
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"Which is worse?
A. A debate between political science geeks about Ayn Rand.
B. A debate between geeks about the origins of the internet.
C. A debate between geeks about political science.
D. A debate between political science geeks about the origins of the internet.
E. A debate between people who are neither, about both. "
Best post ever.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jan 14, 2009 - 11:49am PT
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Dirt, maybe not the best post ever, but f*#king funny as ever!
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TradIsGood
Chalkless climber
the Gunks end of the country
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Jan 14, 2009 - 11:57am PT
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"Worse" is comparative. I think the superlative "worst" would have been correct.
Grammar geek.
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just passing thru
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Jan 14, 2009 - 12:01pm PT
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I think the majority of you have missed the point of “Atlas Shrugged”, Rand is not promoting free markets, but rather examining the qualities of a person that is a productive member of society…
The question asked throughout the novel is “who is John Galt?”
Not, “What are the benefits of a free market?”…
John Galt demonstrates self-reliance, innovation, hard work, intelligence, and sound business ethics...
Are you John Galt or a Moocher?
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:19pm PT
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JPT, you're over-simplifying, just as Rand oversimplifies. There isn't a black and white cut between Galts and Moochers. Our society over-advantages the rich and under-advantages the poor.
Again I put forth the examples of Bush and Paris Hilton. Both succeeded largely because of who their parents were, not because of any of those qualities you just mentioned. Obama is a good example of who you call a "Galt", but I bet for every poor person you perceive to be a "mooch", there's one that has the "Galt" qualities, but can't get anywhere because he or she was born in a poor part of Detroit.
Personally, I think it is valuable for society, thru govt, to take an active role in making sure that those "Galts" born in crappy circumstances get the same kind of opprtunities that Paris Hilton had.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:23pm PT
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TIG writes
"Karl, last I heard, you could pay off a
credit card without any advance notice.
The card company has to notify you before
they can raise the rates. Sounds like a
free market to me. "
You always discredit yourself by defending what shouldn't be defended. You're probably smug from being able to pay off any variable rate loans on 30 days notice but it's obviously not easy for many folks. Once of the potential catalysts for another round of economic hell and bank failures would be if interest rates increased for ARMs triggering a new round of mortgage defaults.
It's true there is some fine print that they can raise your rates on short notice. Think how profitable it would be if they just offered 5% cards with high limits and then jacked the rates to 20% once folks under financial distress charged up their cards. Then jack the rates to 30% with late charges once they couldn't keep paying
Nothing wrong with profitable business eh?
I'd like to be your doctor. You'd sign the "you can't sue me" waiver when you came for your checkup and give you some happy drugs and sell your kidneys. You signed the paper right?
Peace
Karl
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, Ca.
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Jan 14, 2009 - 12:32pm PT
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but I bet for every poor person you perceive to be a "mooch", there's one that has the "Galt" qualities, but can't get anywhere because he or she was born in a poor part of Detroit.
If the person had the Galt ideals, they would be able to find a way out, initially through hard work.
The Hiltons and Bushes do NOT have the Galt ideals, in fact, the lack most of them. The Galt ideals do not necessarily equate to money riches.
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