Quote:
Originally Posted by Byte1
My great-grandfather used a horse powered wagon to go to town for supplies. One day, a local businessman confronted him telling him that if he would just purchase a motorcar(truck) the town wouldn't have to put up with his horses' manure in the street. He was told that his horse manure was a blight on the environment. In those days, combustion engines smoked and made enough noise to frighten livestock. A hundred and fifty years later, we have the (what I label) "Screamers" that predict the end of the world due to combustion engines. I've been told that I should purchase an 'lectric car to save the world. Suggestion: mind your own business and quit worrying about man's extinction that MIGHT occur in a thousand years. Man's been using fossil fuel for thousands of years, since the discovery of fire and we are still around. As a matter of fact, we have a larger population than ever. Don't worry about new ways to produce energy because private industry is always progressing. Just don't allow the Gov. to dictate how we "MUST" change because they do not have a clue. Their only motivation is money in their pockets at the expense of the citizens. Private industry has always been the real motivator for progress.
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Actually, if we remember back to the 40s, 50s, 60s - we innovated because the US University system had MANY RESEARCH scientists employed. There were MANY Federal GRANTS for basic RESEARCH. Also, the space program and the race to the moon provided USEFUL, practical products like VELCRO.........That was the Federal Government DOING the innovating, NOT industry.
.........This basically changed in the 1980s when it was decided that the Federal Government was giving away too much MONEY to the Universities. Also about the same time as portrayed in the movie about "greed is good" - the best and the brightest (and the believers in money) of the College Graduates ORBITTED toward Wall Street.
That is the way I remember the History from 1940 onward. Private Industry has NOT been the prime innovator throughout History. As a matter of fact ......industrial GIANTS have often held back innovation. For example, the railroad TYCOONS - they had to be broken up.The oil and gas industry conned the Federal Govenment into paying it to drill long after the reason for the payments had evaporated. Today the oil and gas industry has MEGA lobbyists PREVENTING any meaningful change. And they have been fighting against E-vehicles and E-bikes. Also, look at Facebook, which simply buys up the competition. As does most of the Silicon Valley corporations. The Federal brought these monopolistic Corporations before Congress, but the CEOs of those companies DAZZLED the CongressPeople who did NOT have the capacity to UNDERSTAND them - much less to regulate them. And now currently we have this unmanageable internet mess of a DARK WEB that is seriously threatening US basic liberty and Capitalism itself.
Not ALL, BUT MANY......INDUSTRIAL Corporations are actually INNOVATING, but they are innovating GREED for themselves, not benefits for you and I.