I take a very longtermist and technology-development focused view on things, so the GHD achievements weigh a lot less in my calculus.
The vast majority of world-changing technology was developed or distributed through for-profit companies. My sense is nonprofits are also more likely to cause harm than for-profits (for reasons that would require its own essay to go into, but are related to their lack of feedback loops).
On a separate claim, I find it really hard to discount the rough period since ~1800 where a huge amount of new technological development took place in academic or other non-profit contexts (including militaries). When you add pre-production research to that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a single world-changing technology since the enlightenment that doesn’t owe a lot of its existence to non-profit research. Am I misunderstanding your claim?
Academia pre the mid-20th-century was a for-profit enterprise. It did not receive substantial government grants and indeed was often very tightly intertwined with the development of industry (much more so than today).
Indeed, the degree to which modern academia is operating on a grant basis and has adopted more of the trappings of the nonprofit space is one of the primary factors in my model of its modern dysfunctions.
Separately, I think the contribution of militaries to industrial and scientific development is overrated, though that also would require a whole essay to go into.
I disagree-voted because the latter sounds like a very extraordinary claim. I know you don’t have the time to go into an essay on this, but do you mind sketching the rough logic?
I take a very longtermist and technology-development focused view on things, so the GHD achievements weigh a lot less in my calculus.
The vast majority of world-changing technology was developed or distributed through for-profit companies. My sense is nonprofits are also more likely to cause harm than for-profits (for reasons that would require its own essay to go into, but are related to their lack of feedback loops).
On a separate claim, I find it really hard to discount the rough period since ~1800 where a huge amount of new technological development took place in academic or other non-profit contexts (including militaries). When you add pre-production research to that, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a single world-changing technology since the enlightenment that doesn’t owe a lot of its existence to non-profit research. Am I misunderstanding your claim?
Academia pre the mid-20th-century was a for-profit enterprise. It did not receive substantial government grants and indeed was often very tightly intertwined with the development of industry (much more so than today).
Indeed, the degree to which modern academia is operating on a grant basis and has adopted more of the trappings of the nonprofit space is one of the primary factors in my model of its modern dysfunctions.
Separately, I think the contribution of militaries to industrial and scientific development is overrated, though that also would require a whole essay to go into.
I disagree-voted because the latter sounds like a very extraordinary claim. I know you don’t have the time to go into an essay on this, but do you mind sketching the rough logic?