[y66]

From Nathan Heller's 12/18/18 New Yorker story:

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Its government is virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure. Has this tiny post-Soviet nation found the way of the future?

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In the U.S., it is generally assumed that private industry leads innovation. Many ambitious techies I met in Tallinn, though, were leaving industry to go work for the state. “If someone had asked me, three years ago, if I could imagine myself working for the government, I would have said, ‘F##k no,’ ” Ott Vatter, who had sold his own business, told me. “But I decided that I could go to the U.S. at any point, and work in an average job at a private company. This is so much bigger.”

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2017-December-17, 13:26, said:

From Nathan Heller's 12/18/18 New Yorker story:

That unbridled capitalism is necessary for innovation is to my mind the great lie of the last 50 years. In my lifetime, I have seen both sides and it is not the lure of profit that drives innovation but the curiosities of the those who wonder, what if.

[barmar]

Curiosity is the spark that gets it going, but capitalism is the fuel that keeps it burning.

However, you often need far less fuel for digital fires. Consider how expensive something like BBO would be if it were all f2f instead of online.