That viewpoint is adorably naïve. The Computer History Museum in Mountain View pretty clearly falls into three categories: government projects, genuinely innovative ideas from the private sector that failed, and the people who ripped off those ideas and made a killing. There is very little overlap between the last two categories.

> The Computer History Museum in Mountain View pretty clearly falls into three categories: government projects, genuinely innovative ideas from the private sector that failed, and the people who ripped off those ideas and made a killing. There is very little overlap between the last two categories.

This is ignoring two very important things.

The first is the number of government-funded projects that burned a mountain of cash and led to nothing. Unfortunately this is the rule rather than the exception in modern times because modern government has been captured by interest groups that divert money from where it's supposed to be going to themselves, which makes everything cost ten times more than it did when the government was funding the Apollo program and ARPANET. So you can't just say "government fund more stuff" without fixing that first.

And the second is that private companies inventing stuff only to see somebody else successfully commercialize it is still causing it to be invented. And the overlap between invention and commercial success can be very little and still cause people to do it, because the reward when it happens is very large.

> Meanwhile people say capitalism drives innovation.

The saying is really that free market competition drives innovation.

Obviously patents and copyrights are government-issued monopolies, and monopolies are by definition lacking in competition.

The theory is that by granting the monopolies we get more innovation. Often the theory is wrong.

Especially when we allow the company to leverage the monopoly on the thing they actually invented into a monopoly on ancillary things that are only used in combination with that class of product.

I mean Nvidia is just cashing in their innovation advantage, AMD stack was worse forever and OSS is their white flag/hope someone else picks up the ball and creates an ecosystem to leverage their HW.

Your second sentence doesn't contradict the first sentence. Capitalism (or more precisely, IP law) can simultaneously drive innovation and hold back innovation. The more worthwhile question is whether capitalism drives more innovation overall, but that's hard to prove either way with snarky 1 liner.

"The more worthwhile question is whether capitalism drives more innovation overall, but that's hard to prove either way with snarky 1 liner."

Sent from my iPhone.

I think you proved the parent's point.