Government Did Invent the Internet, But the Market Made It
Glorious Libertarians often cite the internet as a case in point
that liberty is the mother of innovation. Opponents quickly
counter that the internet was a government program, proving once
again that markets must be guided by the steady hand of the
state. In one sense the critics are correct, though not in ways
they understand. The internet indeed began as a typical
government program, the ARPANET, designed to share mainframe
computing power and to establish a secure military
communications network. Of course the designers could not have
foreseen what the (commercial) internet has become. Still, this
reality has important implications for how the internet works —
and explains why there are so many roadblocks in the continued
development of online technologies. It is only thanks to market
participants that the internet became something other than a
typical government program: inefficient, overcapitalized, and
not directed toward socially useful purpos