Re:Wealth isn’t created at the top, it is merely devoured there
by BurningFrog on Sunday April 16, 2017 @07:19PM
(#14128140)
It's easy to go wrong in both directions here.
The naive version you argue against here is fairly common. Some people actually think that if Edison hadn't invented electric light, we'd still read by candle light!
In reality, someone else would have invented the same or similar things fairly soon afterwards if these "heroes" hadn't done it first.
Then again, advancing the state of science and/or technology planet wide is enormously valuable, even if just by 1 month.
There is no way to measure this, but my guess is that without Steve Wozniak, microcomputers would surely have happened, but maybe 1 year later. What's a jumpstart like that worth for humanity as a whole?
The naive version you argue against here is fairly common. Some people actually think that if Edison hadn't invented electric light, we'd still read by candle light!
In reality, someone else would have invented the same or similar things fairly soon afterwards if these "heroes" hadn't done it first.
Then again, advancing the state of science and/or technology planet wide is enormously valuable, even if just by 1 month.
There is no way to measure this, but my guess is that without Steve Wozniak, microcomputers would surely have happened, but maybe 1 year later. What's a jumpstart like that worth for humanity as a whole?