If it rains this afternoon, and you later tell me that you did a rain dance outside ten minutes before hand, why should I assume that you caused the rain?
I don't see the connection between this, and your assertion that the internet would've happened by now anyways.
The US government funded (or provided funding for) many of the early developments that made the internet as we know it possible. As others have pointed out, the government also made it possible for the telcos to lay the infrastructure by providing them access to public lands and private lands (easements and eminent domain).
How would the companies have assembled the capital to acquire that land or land access themselves at that time? Keep in mind, unlike the Google Fiber announcement, the thing they were building had no demonstrated value as it does today.
In your painful analogy, you suggest that the spending and research and construction the government did or enabled was akin to tossing coins into a wishing well, and magically the internet came into existence. How does that fit with the facts that we have? Or do you also deny that anything in history is knowable?
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So it probably would have happened anyway, therefore what did happen didn't happen?
Correlation is not causality.
If it rains this afternoon, and you later tell me that you did a rain dance outside ten minutes before hand, why should I assume that you caused the rain?
I don't see the connection between this, and your assertion that the internet would've happened by now anyways.
The US government funded (or provided funding for) many of the early developments that made the internet as we know it possible. As others have pointed out, the government also made it possible for the telcos to lay the infrastructure by providing them access to public lands and private lands (easements and eminent domain).
How would the companies have assembled the capital to acquire that land or land access themselves at that time? Keep in mind, unlike the Google Fiber announcement, the thing they were building had no demonstrated value as it does today.
In your painful analogy, you suggest that the spending and research and construction the government did or enabled was akin to tossing coins into a wishing well, and magically the internet came into existence. How does that fit with the facts that we have? Or do you also deny that anything in history is knowable?