> He cites SpaceX as this idea of private investment, completely overlooking the fact that the government is subsidizing the whole endeavour. Please....

Take your pick of any of the major US industries. Chances are the successful players they take a lot in subsidies. None of the Musk companies are really outliers in this, they just get a lot more attention (e.g. GM, Boeing, and GE all take a lot of subsidies).

True that Musk is absolutely not an outlier. But you can't really use him as an example of a company doing all their innovation without any government help. I'd rather the government fund SpaceX and Tesla than Exxon anyway.

You know, I was fully in agreement with you, but I just went looking for numbers and apparently Space X has only received about $20 million in local incentives and rebates for a space launch facility in Texas (although I'm not sure about the "only". That info is generally prefaced by a note that Space X doesn't disclise financial info, and I'm not sure if that implies there could be more or not). Almost all of the $4.9 billion that it's been reported his companies have received in subsidies is for Tesla and Solar City.

So, apparently the example is actually better than it seemed to both of us.

Subsidies are one thing, contracts are another form of support. Government contracts are what kept SpaceX afloat in 08, when they couldn't find private clients, and these contracts can be excess of 100 million.

If we start counting government contracts as "support", there's a whole bunch of companies that need to be viewed in a different light. Every defense contractor for one. Every company that sells to the public school system for another.

It's not like these companies are getting something for nothing, they still have to provide a good or service.

A few big companies have done expensive basic research without direct market value: AT&T, IBM, Xerox, Google to some degree. All of them were (quasi-) monopolists when they did that.

I think that example is also interesting: other than Google, they did that when they had lucrative monopolies but it was also when executive compensation rates were much, much lower and the stock market wasn't as heavily focused on share price growth.

I think there's a potentially valid argument that those factors combined to encourage more long-term planning than we've seen since the 1980s.

Why would you fund billions in research if you can get government handouts?

The same reason you'd fund it without them, for a competitive edge. If you're getting handouts and everyone's getting handouts you still have incentives.