Capitalism response to anon

I appreciate the response from anonymous on "The twilight of capitalism". He or she makes a reasonable argument. But I urge the writer to think through the good points made with a little deeper evaluation. This is not very well put, but very important to understand...things happen in systems. This is to say that capitalism, combined with free enterprise and democracy, produced the resources that produce the incentives that motivate research, and even more importantly, development. The commercial development of academic research is as important as the invention or innovation itself. An example is the automobile. The fact that a Frenchman invented a form of an automobile, or that Daimler invented what most view as the start of the modern automobile, is less important than the commercial production that changed lives in the economic system in America by Olds and Ford.

Much of the funding for those academic institutions who do research comes from the private sector, which, in a capitalistic society is skewed towards results instead of politics. Further, if they were painfully honest, many researchers would admit that much motivation is derived from potential reward in a capitalist system. For example,does Anon know that Lederle Labs and other commercial companies contributed millions of dollars to fund the development of a polio vaccine? Does the writer know that the March of Dimes (encouraged by Roosevelt) gathered huge contributions from an affluent capitalistic society, and was the biggest contributor to the research on Polio? Things happen in systems.

You are, of course, right that the U.S. government is responsible for much great research. But from where did NASA get the breakthrough materials and electronic components for their rockets and space flight? And that first integrated circuit? The Nobel prize was awarded to Jack Kilby, a young engineer at Texas Instruments. He made it viable by making the individual components out of one block of material with a metal layer on top instead of discrete components. This made the integrated circuit useful (and millions of dollars for Texas Instruments). Kilby became wealthy as well, as he led the team that invented the hand held calculator at TI. Microprocessors are simply an evolution of the Integrated Circuit to put the whole CPU (central processing unit) onto a single IC chip (VSLI chip). The government contracted and sponsored much research, but the drivers were Texas Instruments, Intel (Moore) and Garret AI Research..all private enterprise firms. Things happen in systems.

Two more points for Anon to consider. Researchers don't write history. Often biased liberal arts majors write history. I believe my experiences of what happened more than someone else recreating a view of what he/she believes might have happened through the filter of their biases.

If our capitalist economic system is "200 years old" and has produced more wealth, innovation, higher standard of living, more per capita output, and a bigger middle class than any other economic system in history...should we trade it in for ...socialism that is older and proven less productive, or the failed communist (state run) economic system? What is the alternative model that has a proven track record of better economic outcomes and productivity? To paraphrase the great Churchill...it's the worst system except for all the rest of them.