From the link:
METHODOLOGY Specific dollar amounts expended to support each study were not available for the projects profiled in this report. Most were conducted as parts of more extensive research funded with government grants or financial support. The costs provided, therefore, represent the total amount of the grant or grants from which the study was supported and not the precise amount spent on the individual studies. This is not intended to imply or suggest other research supported by these grants was wasteful, unnecessary or without merit.
It's an incomplete and distorted picture of how bureaucracy funds research. I brought it up to add counterpoints and context to the implication that government is actually good at this sort of thing if we'd just get over free market capitalism (or something).
Did they invest the same amount in these two?
I was saying that just pointing out that programs like DARPAnet might not make up for all the other nonsense.
And we can flip that around as well, maybe PARC was spun off from some successful grants, but we're not taking into account these sorts of failures when attaching the price tag to those initial grants.
I think this is a really bad straw man. There's broad bipartisan support for funding research into good ideas, assuming it's done the right way. The problem, though, is that the billions in government research spending we already allocate are subject to incredible amounts of lobbying and earmarking.
We'll have a NASA allocation, but it has to take place in the state of a particular Senator. Or the research will be funneled through the department of defense and received by defense contractors.
And, besides, for every DARPAnet, we have many "Where does it hurt most to be stung by a bee?" (1).
It's hard to evaluate whether we would still end up in a net positive situation. I don't have hard feelings against people who are both enthusiastic and skeptical about government funding grants.
(1) https://www.flake.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/ef6fcd58-c5...