Andresen has mentioned that government's funding of science is more crucial because it takes a while for a breakthrough into a new area to happen, like 20 years long - companies can grow on results achieved in science. However well intentioned VCs are they are more goal oriented.
Bell being huge and not unlike government organizations had bell labs - i am sure you all know that transistor came from there. Idea for bell labs was to put many great scientists together and wait for things to happen. Internet is the other thing - one cannot imagine private money investing that much in such nebulous goal - where everything from microcircuits to software stack had to be developed to birth the Internet.
VC doing science is not a bad thing but in the long run government can provide a steadier hand to people that do science than market driven entities. Financial market cycles are detrimental to projects that run on 20-30 year span or clusters of research projects.
If VCs can do a hybrid model where government can step in during lean times and help science projects survive with minimal bearacratic interference I think that could the best IMO.
Bell being huge and not unlike government organizations had bell labs - i am sure you all know that transistor came from there. Idea for bell labs was to put many great scientists together and wait for things to happen. Internet is the other thing - one cannot imagine private money investing that much in such nebulous goal - where everything from microcircuits to software stack had to be developed to birth the Internet.
VC doing science is not a bad thing but in the long run government can provide a steadier hand to people that do science than market driven entities. Financial market cycles are detrimental to projects that run on 20-30 year span or clusters of research projects.
If VCs can do a hybrid model where government can step in during lean times and help science projects survive with minimal bearacratic interference I think that could the best IMO.