Sure they did. I also didn't say government is required for these types of developments either, by the way.
The government sometimes had a need for things that don't yet exist, and necessity is the mother of invention, so they seek out people and companies who have what it takes to fill those needs.
I take it you didn't actually read either #20 or #21, did you.
Please take a minute and actually read them.
If you choose to interpret my position as that of a big-government cheerleader extolling the virtues of the great communist benefactor, spawning an army of dutiful proles churning out the nostrums which save the great socialist collective, that says more about your built in mindset than it does about what I said, and that is becoming apparent by the fact that you keep inventing positions of mine that do not actually exist.
As I stated way back in the thread, Japan observed and copied the heavy lifting idea and took it to the next level, which eventually became
what we started calling "Japan, Inc." and the tsunami of cheap well made consumer goods that walloped the American marketplace was partly due to the fact that the economies of scale in that tiny island nation was buffered and buttressed by a network of investment banks which leveraged a benevolent alliance of business and government interests that allowed more risk taking and more innovation.
There is no Ministry of International Trade and Industry here and there never was, but in the postwar era and on into the 1960's and early 1970's, high tech in this country enjoyed a spirit of public/private partnership that stimulated advances faster than what a normally cautious private sector would approve of with unprotected venture capital.
Today, I do not even believe the same approach or methods would work the same chiefly because these high tech entities have now amassed much more cash and assets and they have gone global/multinational, thus their interests are likely much different than they were in the heady days of US Motorola, Bell Labs, Texas Instruments et al.
But take Tesla, for instance. Tesla's aims are indeed global in the long term but Elon Musk has stated quite firmly that he views his company as a distinctly American venture.
My opinion only: What would a "moon shot" approach do for a company like Tesla? This is not to say that Musk would welcome significant partnering with government supported development programs, but it's interesting to speculate how that would affect their strategy, especially when one considers the formidable overseas competition in battery development.
