The federal government’s investment in green energy is very similar to what it did in the 1950s with computer chips — paying more for a new technology so that the price could later come down for everyone. It resembles the investments government made in the 1960s to develop ARPANET, the first, rough version of the Internet, and, later, the Global Positioning System. Those policies, incidentally, created the digital infrastructure that made possible companies such as PayPal, the original source of Elon Musk’s billions.
