More recently, if I recall correctly, the internet started as a US military project.
This is about HALF true. I've linked to plenty of sources debunking it before.
For all of the horrible nasty downsides of wars, I really don't fee like "slows down the pace of invention" is one of them.
Like ALL government spending, it doesn't STOP invention or progress or whatever, it simply misallocates the resources and causes malinvestment. You're right, drone technology may one day lead to the Tacocopter (if the government ever ALLOWS them to proceed), and you're right that the Tacocopter guys will benefit from a lot of research already done by the military, but the simple fact is that those military research costs are essentially dead weight loss. The Tacocopter (or superglue, or the Internet, or whatever else) might not actually be useful enough to society to justify the costs, once you include the initial R&D outlays provided by government. Giving that government operates completely outside of market forces, there's really no way for us to know other than the intuitive notion that if drone technology was likely to result in profitable business ventures, the government wouldn't need to be doing the research, Microsoft or Google would have already been doing it.
After all, isn't Google leading the way on the technology to have cars that drive themselves? That presumably has some military applications, doesn't it? How could this be if we need government to start our research and development efforts for us?
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