Let's just disagree. I really don't see it your way
No let's just admit you are wrong. You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts. However inconvenient the actual facts may be to you. Sorry.
The facts are that it was the public sector that provided the seed funding for the Internet. The private sector was useless for that. We actually have a controlled experiment, because we saw what the private sector was capable of producing, and that was crapware like AOL and Lotus Notes.
The entirety of the modern internet (and web) in most countries was built privately.
which is not only wrong but also entirely irrelevant, because that only happened after the Internet had already been created, entirely with US government funding as it happens. That investment only happened "naturally" for the Internet, the public sector contender that the government had built, because it was the only one good enough to invest further in.
We know that that infrastructure build-out would not have happened "naturally" for a purely private sector-seeded system, because we saw it not-happen for Lotus Notes, the private sector contender, because it was so unpromising. Had there just been the private sector efforts, you would not be able to buy books online at all today.
With the exception of a few places like the old AT&T labs, the private sector simply does not do really early stage projects, but the public sector, or more precisely the non-profit sector, can. This is because non-profits (almost by definition) can provide some funding for projects that don't need to be justified for a specific payoff.
In other words, the reason that the non-profit sector is better at seed funding is precisely because "The primary motivator and driver for ARPANET had nothing whatsoever to do with us being able to buy books online."
We are buying books online roughly 50 years after Paul Baran's packet switching. What's the net present value for a 50 year payoff? Which venture capitalist is going to invest in your project for that? Answer: nobody.
every military initiative because they might develop into amazingly useful civilian projects
This is not true. It's just very difficult to convince Americans that their taxes should pay for seed funding for healthcare or for buying books online, but very easy to convince them to pay up for whizzy new bombs for dropping on people who look like me. So the US military budget ends up being a large part of the US R&D budget. Given different politics, you could instead just fund R&D directly.
No let's just admit you are wrong. You are entitled to your opinion but not your own facts. However inconvenient the actual facts may be to you. Sorry.
The facts are that it was the public sector that provided the seed funding for the Internet. The private sector was useless for that. We actually have a controlled experiment, because we saw what the private sector was capable of producing, and that was crapware like AOL and Lotus Notes.
The entirety of the modern internet (and web) in most countries was built privately.
which is not only wrong but also entirely irrelevant, because that only happened after the Internet had already been created, entirely with US government funding as it happens. That investment only happened "naturally" for the Internet, the public sector contender that the government had built, because it was the only one good enough to invest further in.
We know that that infrastructure build-out would not have happened "naturally" for a purely private sector-seeded system, because we saw it not-happen for Lotus Notes, the private sector contender, because it was so unpromising. Had there just been the private sector efforts, you would not be able to buy books online at all today.
With the exception of a few places like the old AT&T labs, the private sector simply does not do really early stage projects, but the public sector, or more precisely the non-profit sector, can. This is because non-profits (almost by definition) can provide some funding for projects that don't need to be justified for a specific payoff.
In other words, the reason that the non-profit sector is better at seed funding is precisely because "The primary motivator and driver for ARPANET had nothing whatsoever to do with us being able to buy books online."
We are buying books online roughly 50 years after Paul Baran's packet switching. What's the net present value for a 50 year payoff? Which venture capitalist is going to invest in your project for that? Answer: nobody.
every military initiative because they might develop into amazingly useful civilian projects
This is not true. It's just very difficult to convince Americans that their taxes should pay for seed funding for healthcare or for buying books online, but very easy to convince them to pay up for whizzy new bombs for dropping on people who look like me. So the US military budget ends up being a large part of the US R&D budget. Given different politics, you could instead just fund R&D directly.