phiwong t1_j1r86j8 wrote on December 26, 2022 at 7:34 PM

Reply to comment by ANOKNUSA in TIL Douglas Engelbart never received any royalties for the invention of the mouse. In an interview he said "SRI (Stanford Research Institute) patented the mouse, but they had no idea of its value. Some years later it was known that they had licensed it to Apple Computer for something like $40,000." by whoiskamalsingh

Government grants and open research etc are still subject to the distribution of resources. A government gets money by taxing income and profits. So it is taking from someone and giving to another. It is resource allocation by fiat that wouldn't be possible without excess generated by production and labor.

If everyone could only grow enough food to feed themselves and could not generate excess, then there is no excess to distribute. From whence then comes a "free" exchange or development of ideas. There is no "free" in this - only what one recognizes as more legitimate and less legitimate forms of distribution and allocation of resources.

Again, irrespective of ideology, societies only develop new ideas and technology when society generates excess. If a society produces more than enough for the basic needs of their society, then some people can explore other venues of value creation (again, being agnostic about what is value).

Profit isn't a goal into itself - that is a strawman. The problem is distributional both in the resources to create and develop the idea as well as the resources needed to bring the benefit to society at large. Otherwise we end up subscribing to magical thinking as far as how ideas can develop and how ideas either in the form of knowledge or products are distributed.