[SteveA]

Still off thread a bit (though this truly is about the general character of how many libertarians view things):

Consider what percent of engineering talent is directly employed by government? And also what percent of this talent is indirectly employed by government contracts or subsidies? Often this engineering work is focused on rather non-immediately profitable enterprises like building more military technology or sending probes into space etc. The real question is whether or not the general state of humanity would be better if we'd have let these people focus on more private concerns instead (like better construction technology, improved telecommunications, energy and transportation etc.).

My guess is that the internet, housing, energy and transportation would be better served without government beaurocracies running a lot of the show in these areas. We'd likely have less military and space technology, but what real benefits does the average Joe gain from these? Few. It honestly would have been better to let engineers do what they do best and design and come up with new ideas with regard to their own personal desires and assist fulfilling the private desires of others than to assume centralized, socialized government politics were truly remain focused and beneficial to the needs of the average citizen.

So a wider scale view of the effect of government control over engineering resources has likely resulted in greater resources placed into space and military endeavors than otherwise. Is that truly beneficial? Also, have these resources been used efficiently? Would private use of engineering skills have been more thrifty and efficient in the use of these?

There is a greater benefit to publicly available technology than privately owned, but consider that government itself is the entity enforcing a model that treats ideas as if one person has sole private ownership of them. So the issue of the costs of private ownership/monopolization of technology is a problem government itself created.

No, it seems almost certain that technology would grow faster and be more immediately serving to the needs of people if the large majority of government control over technology were removed.