Let me say up front that there is a divergence here between my ideological biases/priors and what I think I can prove or demonstrate objectively. I usually try to stick to the latter because I think that’s more useful to everyone, but since you asked I need to get into the former.
Does government have a role to play? Well, taking that literally, then absolutely, yes. If nothing else, I think it’s clear that government creates certain conditions of political stability, and provides legal infrastructure such as corporate and contract law, property law including IP, and the court system. All of those are necessary for progress.
(And when I mentioned “root-cause analysis on most human suffering” above, I was mostly thinking about dysfunctional governments in the poorest countries that are totally corrupt and/or can’t even maintain law & order)
I also think government, especially the military, has at least a sort of incidental role to play as a customer of technology. The longitude problem was funded in part by the British navy. The technique of canning was invented when Napoleon offered a prize for a way to preserve food for his military on long foreign campaigns. The US military was one of the first customers of integrated circuits. Etc.
And of course the military has reasons to do at least some R&D in-house, too.
But I think what you’re really asking about is whether civilian government should fund progress, or promote it through “policy”, or otherwise be actively involved in directing it.
All I can say for sure here is: I don’t know. So here’s where we get into my priors, which are pretty much laissez-faire. That makes me generally unfavorable towards government subsidy or intervention. But again, this is what I don’t think I have a real answer on yet. In fact, a big part of the motivation for starting The Roots of Progress was to challenge myself on these issues and to try to build up a stronger evidentiary base to draw conclusions.
For now let me just suggest:
I think that all government subsidies are morally problematic, since taxpayers are non-consenting
I don’t (yet?) see what government subsidies can accomplish that can’t (in theory) be accomplished non-coercively
I worry that even when government attempts to advance progress, it may end up slowing it down—for example, the dominance of NIH/NSF in science funding combined with their committee-based peer-review system is often suggested as a factor slowing down scientific progress
In general I think that progress is better made in decentralized fashion, and government solutions tend to be centralized
I also think that progress is helped by accountability mechanisms, and government tends to lack these mechanisms or have weaker ones
That said, here are a few things that give me pause.
Government-backed R&D, even for not-directly-military purposes, has had some significant wins, such as DARPA kicking off the Internet.
Some major projects have only gotten done with government support, such as the US transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. This happened in the most laissez-faire country in the world, at a time when it was way more laissez-faire than it is now, so… if that needed government support, maybe there was a reason. (I don’t know yet.)
Economic strength is closely related to national security, which entangles the government and the economy in ways I haven’t fully worked out yet. E.g., I’m not sure the best way for government to ensure that we have strategic commodities such as oil, steel, and food in wartime.
Anyway, this is all stuff I continue to think deeply about and hope to have more to say about later. And at some point I would like to deeply engage with Mazzucato’s work and other similar work so that I can have a more informed opinion.
Let me say up front that there is a divergence here between my ideological biases/priors and what I think I can prove or demonstrate objectively. I usually try to stick to the latter because I think that’s more useful to everyone, but since you asked I need to get into the former.
Does government have a role to play? Well, taking that literally, then absolutely, yes. If nothing else, I think it’s clear that government creates certain conditions of political stability, and provides legal infrastructure such as corporate and contract law, property law including IP, and the court system. All of those are necessary for progress.
(And when I mentioned “root-cause analysis on most human suffering” above, I was mostly thinking about dysfunctional governments in the poorest countries that are totally corrupt and/or can’t even maintain law & order)
I also think government, especially the military, has at least a sort of incidental role to play as a customer of technology. The longitude problem was funded in part by the British navy. The technique of canning was invented when Napoleon offered a prize for a way to preserve food for his military on long foreign campaigns. The US military was one of the first customers of integrated circuits. Etc.
And of course the military has reasons to do at least some R&D in-house, too.
But I think what you’re really asking about is whether civilian government should fund progress, or promote it through “policy”, or otherwise be actively involved in directing it.
All I can say for sure here is: I don’t know. So here’s where we get into my priors, which are pretty much laissez-faire. That makes me generally unfavorable towards government subsidy or intervention. But again, this is what I don’t think I have a real answer on yet. In fact, a big part of the motivation for starting The Roots of Progress was to challenge myself on these issues and to try to build up a stronger evidentiary base to draw conclusions.
For now let me just suggest:
I think that all government subsidies are morally problematic, since taxpayers are non-consenting
I don’t (yet?) see what government subsidies can accomplish that can’t (in theory) be accomplished non-coercively
I worry that even when government attempts to advance progress, it may end up slowing it down—for example, the dominance of NIH/NSF in science funding combined with their committee-based peer-review system is often suggested as a factor slowing down scientific progress
In general I think that progress is better made in decentralized fashion, and government solutions tend to be centralized
I also think that progress is helped by accountability mechanisms, and government tends to lack these mechanisms or have weaker ones
That said, here are a few things that give me pause.
Government-backed R&D, even for not-directly-military purposes, has had some significant wins, such as DARPA kicking off the Internet.
Some major projects have only gotten done with government support, such as the US transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. This happened in the most laissez-faire country in the world, at a time when it was way more laissez-faire than it is now, so… if that needed government support, maybe there was a reason. (I don’t know yet.)
Economic strength is closely related to national security, which entangles the government and the economy in ways I haven’t fully worked out yet. E.g., I’m not sure the best way for government to ensure that we have strategic commodities such as oil, steel, and food in wartime.
Anyway, this is all stuff I continue to think deeply about and hope to have more to say about later. And at some point I would like to deeply engage with Mazzucato’s work and other similar work so that I can have a more informed opinion.