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No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

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Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#51

Post by gruseom »

twoodfin wrote: post #17
joezydeco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounded bad coming out of the President's mouth because he did a very bad job of paraphrasing Elizabeth Warren. Warren put it like this: " I love small businesses. My daughter started a small business, my brother started a small business, my aunt Alice started a small business, I worked in it when I was a teenager. This is really about a basic question of fairness. And that is, when big businesses really make it b…

The Republicans have given their vision of how we build our future—they've said, 'I got mine, the rest of you are on your own'. Now that's some thoughtful political discourse right there. Take the most draconian budget Republicans have even proposed, and you're still looking at trillions in spending for "the rest of you". And anyone want to guess how big a % of the Federal budget "roads, bridges and schools" are? Nex…

There actually could be a serious argument about firefighters, because they mostly don't fight fires anymore:

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fir...

Probably won't happen, though, because everybody loves them.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#52

Post by cantankerous »

twoodfin wrote: post #12
rondon1 wrote: post #6

The republicans want to frame the presidential race as Big government vs. small government. "Romney wants to let the free market fuel America's success while Obama wants the government to your money and spend it how they see fit" Obama has recently tried to point out that the success of the free market in America has been dependent on the US Government. "Someone built the road and bridges and someone educated your em…

"Someone built the road and bridges and someone educated your employees, and someone built they internet that you use. Those things were funded by tax dollars." All of that's true, but it's also true that the guy who didn't build a business also gets to use those roads and the internet. It's also true that private spending on telecommunications infrastructure in this country utterly dwarfs public spending. And nobody…

I agree with you on infrastructure spending except for one nuance. Usually telecom companies laying down infrastructure are given rights of way and easements that make their jobs much, much, less expensive. That is to say, if we lived in a private property, capitalist utopia, laying down thousands of miles of fiber would be orders of magnitude more expensive and possibly completely intractable. Government plays a role here by suspending private property rights in lieu of the added value to the public where infrastructure is concerned. If you were to figure in the money saved to infrastructure builders by government, then the spending numbers would like quite a bit different.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#53

Post by lutze »

mseebach wrote: post #43
lutze wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment seemed quite sarcastic, and looked to be trying to equivocate responsibility. Not that I'm above using sarcasm myself, obviously. The fact is, that in this instance, a Murdoch owned media company is clearly distorting the truth to further a political agenda. So in this instance, it is perfectly reasonable to criticise Murdoch in particular, without having to resort to qualifications. In my opinion of cou…

You implied causation between working for a Murdoch-owned media outlet and writing a column with a light take on the facts. That's fallacious, and that's why I called it out.

No, I implied causation between working for a Murdoch owned media outlet and writing a column furthering a specific political agenda.

The lying part is incidental really.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#54

Post by jeffdavis »

rondon1 wrote: post #6

The republicans want to frame the presidential race as Big government vs. small government. "Romney wants to let the free market fuel America's success while Obama wants the government to your money and spend it how they see fit" Obama has recently tried to point out that the success of the free market in America has been dependent on the US Government. "Someone built the road and bridges and someone educated your em…

I find the Republican perspective more convincing:

* Roads, police, schools, and other critical things that businesses need to thrive are mostly provided by state and local governments.

* Those critical things actually cost a pretty small fraction of total government spending.

* The exception to the above point would be the DoD, which could be seen as critical to the success of business, and DARPA which funds a lot of good research that businesses use. But is the lesson here that we need more defense spending? Or more DARPA spending? Or more basic research outside of the DoD?

* If the lesson is that we should have more funding for DARPA or basic research outside the DoD, then great. I'm 100% in agreement. It's a very small fraction of the budget now (I see DARPA is about 3.2B), so increasing it won't make a dent.

None of this seems relevant in the context of the very high federal spending right now. Very few of those dollars apply to the things businesses need to thrive.

And as for any moral argument, the people already paid for these things once, so it's not like something is owed any more than I still owe the grocery store for the food I bought. Yes, I will buy there again; and similarly, we shouldn't cut the government functions that are necessary for business to thrive.

But no, the Democrats at the federal level can't take credit for the police my city hired or the roads they built. And they can't use the success of DARPA to justify a bunch of things that don't resemble DARPA and cost much more money.

(For those wondering, I live in a Democrat-controlled city; and I have, when I felt it was appropriate, voted for city tax increases because I think they do a great job, notwithstanding an apparent monorail project[1]. So I'm not a "government is bad" kind of person.)

[1] That's a reference to a Simpson's episode, not meant literally.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#55

Post by ojbyrne »

brown9-2 wrote: post #44
twoodfin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Someone built the road and bridges and someone educated your employees, and someone built they internet that you use. Those things were funded by tax dollars." All of that's true, but it's also true that the guy who didn't build a business also gets to use those roads and the internet. It's also true that private spending on telecommunications infrastructure in this country utterly dwarfs public spending. And nobody…

real marginal tax rates that will approach 50+% Can you elaborate on this? It seems to me that the proposal for restoring the highest bracket's marginal tax rate to what it was prior to 2001 would restore it to 39.6%.

Adding on state tax gets you there. California, for example, has a top rate of 10.3%.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#56

Post by Prophasi »

joezydeco wrote: post #24
Prophasi wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans have given their vision of how we build our future—they've said, 'I got mine, the rest of you are on your own'. Which is, in turn, a poor job of paraphrasing the actual small-government view, which would be better stated as 'I was on my own, I made it, and you can do the same.' And not all Republicans/libertarians have made it yet. For them it might be 'I haven't made it yet, but I will -- and so can…

I think the GOP's voting record is enough to show that they can publicly proclaim support for public infrastructure, education, civil rights, and healthcare but then do exactly the opposite when it comes to legislation.

Sure. But now you're contrasting the philosophy with what politicians actually do in office. If your argument is that politicians engage in lying and hypocrisy, I don't think you'll find many takers.

But I sincerely hope you'd assert the same (with tweaked parameters) for Democrats.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#57

Post by prodigal_erik »

russell wrote: post #34

And Al Gore invented the internet. Seriously, he sponsored the legislation that set up and funded the internet as a separate entity from NSFNET and (D)ARPANET. More government meddling that benefited no-one.

That's merely administrative partitioning, though. On the wire there's one big reachable address space which predated his involvement, and the creators' names appear on RFCs.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#58

Post by astine »

mrj wrote: post #42
astine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Are you really going to criticize the government for investing in American companies of which a couple ones failed on a VC news site." I am. The government is not a VC firm. It's investment are invariably political and not business based. There's a huge potential for waste there, not to mention conflict of interest. A DoD project that happened to have civilian applications is a different beast entirely.

The problem can't always be left up to pure market forces, though. VCs do not fund projects that they don't believe will stand a chance of producing a large return. They may fund several ideas with a small chance, but a business that will provide for the greater good, cost a lot of money up front, and only provide small returns simply won't get funded. Sometimes government must be used to provide for the greater good…

It's not a matter of free markets, it a matter of corruption. Solyndra's business model as a company was provably unsound years before it emerged as scandal but it still received funding from the government because people believed in the idea of a solar company. The thing is that Solyndra ended up not actually contributing much to solar as a business or technology because their source of income was based on politics and not on making solar power workable. Seeing as Solyndra's founders were politically connected, it looks a lot like the real driving motivator here was political back-rubbing and not actual improvement to alternate energy technology.

If you want the government to fund scientific advancement so that alternate energies can become reality, that's one thing, but the government shouldn't be funding provably unsound companies just because they happen to be in a popular field. It's comparable to investing in Pets Dot Com because the Internet is the new thing.

At best government funding of industry won't actually improve the industry and will just be a colossal waste of money. At worse, it will be yet another avenue for politically connected connected millionaires to get free public money put into their private ventures.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#59

Post by fpgeek »

ojbyrne wrote: post #55
brown9-2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

real marginal tax rates that will approach 50+% Can you elaborate on this? It seems to me that the proposal for restoring the highest bracket's marginal tax rate to what it was prior to 2001 would restore it to 39.6%.

Adding on state tax gets you there. California, for example, has a top rate of 10.3%.

One small point: at the income level where the 39.6% bracket applies, you are almost certainly itemizing deductions (especially if you live in a state with an income tax). In that case, every dollar of state tax paid is deductible for federal purposes, measurably lowering the effective combined rate.

Re: No Credit for Uncle Sam in creating Net? Vint Cerf disagrees

#60

Post by fpgeek »

stox wrote: post #31

Personally, I believe that the Internet, as we know it, is a product of the ARPANET, the BBS communities, the UUCP communities, and the divestiture of AT&T.

And two of the four were the result of direct action by the federal government, so they deserve more than a little credit.
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