The default situation is whatever was yesterday. I’d be astonished to learn that even a single significant civilization functioned without subsidies or patronage of priorities held by a society’s leaders.

> The default situation is whatever was yesterday.

If Amazon delivered you a TV yesterday that doesn’t suddenly become the default where you can expect another one today and every day after that.

The US government does a new budget every year, making every year a new ballgame.

No but if a TV was in my house yesterday I’d bet that it’ll be there today.

And my point about there being no natural state of subsidies is more important.

Those subsidies lasted a long time, but just as with a TV they didn’t last forever.

So if your argument is some subsidy will probably happen next year sure, but individual subsidies change over time. No specific subsidy is the default.

This doesn’t seem connected at all to your previous claim. You said that the default is an absence of subsidies?

There’s no contradiction between saying:

For any specific situation the default is no subsidy.

With millions of situations some of them are not going to be at the default.

In 500 years will some specific things be subsidized? Vs in 500 years will something be subsidized?

It didn’t create a level playing field, it just discouraged a very specific type of R&D while ignoring all others. All other types of employee salaries follow certain rules and some can optionally follow R&D rules. Software is now the only one required to follow 5 year R&D amortization so the deck is now stacked against software.

Software is an asset. If you pay people to build a building you don’t get to deduct their salaries as an operating expense.