Comment by ghushn3

> Yuri Gagarin was the first man in orbit, and that was absolutely a multi-billion dollar invention.

That was government-funded. Most projects aren't that lucky. And are any governments funding self-driving cars?

> Alan Turing didn't pursue his ideas because he wanted to get wealth beyond imagining.

I said multi billion dollar cost. Not multi billion dollar benefit. He's not an example.

> Mondragon makes billions of dollars annually, and strongly limits executive pay.

Have they made any inventions that required a billion dollars or more? Ten billion?

But you saying "makes billions" is exactly what I'm talking about. It's great that they don't pay a lot of money to executives and the workers own things. But the company invested money and the company profited. It didn't all go to making the world a better place.

You avoid particularly wealthy people when a coop can self-fund, but the coop is still trying to profit off the result of the research. And if a risky research project ever can't be self-funded, then whatever/whoever makes the loan might make a huge profit. If that incentive isn't there, the loan doesn't happen and the research doesn't happen.

> I think it's very reasonable to assume that we can, we have historically, and currently do, make multi-billion dollar investments for the good of all. The idea that it requires some profit incentive is, imo, a pernicious falsehood.

It doesn't require it, but if you make it possible to profit off research then you end up with much more money spent on research.