Jim Manzi, founder and Chairman of Applied Predictive
Technologies, and the author of Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of
Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics and Society.writes:
Many entrepreneurs hold the opinion that "I did it all
on my own," which may be well adapted to leadership success in certain
situations, but it is objectively myopic. The entrepreneur relies on an
ecosystem of venture capitalists, risk-taking purchasers, and so on. This
ecosystem itself rests on a deeper foundation of collective, government-led
enterprise. The delivery of our software, for example, depended on the
existence of the Internet, which is the product of a series of
government-sponsored R&D efforts, in combination with subsequent massive
private commercial development. Government funding has been essential to much
of the university science that entrepreneurs have exploited. Honest courts and
police are required for functioning capital markets and protection of assets;
physical infrastructure is required for the roads and running water without
which we would not spend much time thinking about artificial intelligence
software. At the absolute foundation, national armed forces protect the whole
system against external aggression. All of our exciting technical and economic
innovations ultimately require men to stand watch all night looking through
Starlight scopes mounted on assault rifles--and die if necessary--to protect
our commercial, law-bound society. Would you do this to protect a billionaire
hedge-fund manager who sees his country as nothing more than lines on a map?
The vessel of the broader society must survive if social
evolution of any kind is to take place within it…
More? Check out http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/inequality-is-a-bug-not-a-feature/256864/
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