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In a Western market economy, we encourage the outcomes we want through regulation and policy. For example the High Tech industry is propped up in the US through

In a Western market economy, we encourage the outcomes we want through regulation and policy. For example the High Tech industry is propped up in the US through fat government contracts for defense related companies (eg Palantir, Google), strategic venture funds (CIA's In-Q-Tel), government innovation efforts that are given away (Darpa, Arpanet), government funding to universities to teach certain course or research certain fields. Since farming, manufacturing, infrastructure and energy could also be supported in this way, we should give them the same love that Silicon Valley gets from the Government. Particularly because they would help the other half of America get back to work. Above all we should not be imposing regulations to force these industries out of business.

chillacy 10y ago
The US government already props up many of these industries too, like corn farmers and green energy. If you're in the corn business or making solar panels, you can bet you're gonna lobby for continued support. Tech certainly started from a government investment, but at this point much of it is probably self sustaining. In-Q-Tel makes up a small % of venture investments (mostly in defense-useful areas), and most of the money stems from B2C or B2B. > Above all we should not be imposing regulations to force these industries out of business Agreed. I'd also argue we shouldn't be imposing regulations to play favorites, because that has the side effect of hurting other businesses. Should the government help taxi cab companies or uber? Greater regulation favors the cab companies, which powers lobbyists to keep things the way they are. Part of this digresses into what you think the role of government should be. Personally I don't think government should try to be our parents: it should level the playing field, try to stay out of the way, and let market forces shape most of the economy, intervening only for the important stuff like environment. The reasons are varied and some philosophical, but if you're starting from different beliefs you'll see things differently.
- riazrizvi 10y ago
  "Government should try to stay out of the way, let market forces shape most of the economy". Of course, we already know that excessively planned economies cannot compete with market economies. I'm simply saying, we lose our chance to innovate wherever we allow investors to fully outsource industries - it sells off our future potential unless we replace it with some other human endeavor. What's the goal of humanity? To reach a GDP high score? I hope not.
  - eru 10y ago
    GDP is just easy to measure, but tends to correlate well with almost everything we care about in an economy (in the long run). There's nothing too magical about it. I don't see why you want government fat cats and lobbyist deciding about innovation? Why are they better placed than the people who risk their money?
    - riazrizvi 10y ago
      The problem with GDP as a statistic is that it is just a sum total. We net it across the whole country. So if California could make twice the entire country's GDP in 2017 but the rest of the country's GDP were to fall to zero, then this is a win by this simple metric. But it is not a win for the country, if the rest of it were to become derelict. One might still say it is an economic win, objectively, because this holy number has doubled. But politically it is a fail, because California won't determine the government on its own, so even dispassionately you cannot call it a political win. Therefore perhaps GDP needs to be measured as a weighted average across the States. Perhaps not a simple weight, because maybe people are more sensitive to declines than improvements. Ultimately though the government is not solving for a higher GDP but rather for higher votes. And economic variables are only as good as their ability to predict where votes will go.
      - eru 10y ago
        Your argument reminds me of one brought up in the P vs NP debate: what if we find that indeed P==NP, but the algorithms required take O(n^1000)? The answer is: in that cause, the convenient shorthand of P ==tractable and NP==intractable breaks down, and we have to come up with a better way to formalize this informal distinction we care about. However in practice, algorithms with running times in P usually have small exponents, like O(n^4) or so. To come back to GDP: yes, it would be weird if California would get all the nations GDP. In practice this doesn't happen---but if it ever did, we'd need a new measure to correlates with all the good things we actually care about.
        riazrizvi 10y ago

chillacy 10y ago

The US government already props up many of these industries too, like corn farmers and green energy. If you're in the corn business or making solar panels, you can bet you're gonna lobby for continued support. Tech certainly started from a government investment, but at this point much of it is probably self sustaining. In-Q-Tel makes up a small % of venture investments (mostly in defense-useful areas), and most of the money stems from B2C or B2B. > Above all we should not be imposing regulations to force these industries out of business Agreed. I'd also argue we shouldn't be imposing regulations to play favorites, because that has the side effect of hurting other businesses. Should the government help taxi cab companies or uber? Greater regulation favors the cab companies, which powers lobbyists to keep things the way they are. Part of this digresses into what you think the role of government should be. Personally I don't think government should try to be our parents: it should level the playing field, try to stay out of the way, and let market forces shape most of the economy, intervening only for the important stuff like environment. The reasons are varied and some philosophical, but if you're starting from different beliefs you'll see things differently.

riazrizvi 10y ago
"Government should try to stay out of the way, let market forces shape most of the economy". Of course, we already know that excessively planned economies cannot compete with market economies. I'm simply saying, we lose our chance to innovate wherever we allow investors to fully outsource industries - it sells off our future potential unless we replace it with some other human endeavor. What's the goal of humanity? To reach a GDP high score? I hope not.
- eru 10y ago
  GDP is just easy to measure, but tends to correlate well with almost everything we care about in an economy (in the long run). There's nothing too magical about it. I don't see why you want government fat cats and lobbyist deciding about innovation? Why are they better placed than the people who risk their money?
  - riazrizvi 10y ago
    The problem with GDP as a statistic is that it is just a sum total. We net it across the whole country. So if California could make twice the entire country's GDP in 2017 but the rest of the country's GDP were to fall to zero, then this is a win by this simple metric. But it is not a win for the country, if the rest of it were to become derelict. One might still say it is an economic win, objectively, because this holy number has doubled. But politically it is a fail, because California won't determine the government on its own, so even dispassionately you cannot call it a political win. Therefore perhaps GDP needs to be measured as a weighted average across the States. Perhaps not a simple weight, because maybe people are more sensitive to declines than improvements. Ultimately though the government is not solving for a higher GDP but rather for higher votes. And economic variables are only as good as their ability to predict where votes will go.
    - eru 10y ago
      Your argument reminds me of one brought up in the P vs NP debate: what if we find that indeed P==NP, but the algorithms required take O(n^1000)? The answer is: in that cause, the convenient shorthand of P ==tractable and NP==intractable breaks down, and we have to come up with a better way to formalize this informal distinction we care about. However in practice, algorithms with running times in P usually have small exponents, like O(n^4) or so. To come back to GDP: yes, it would be weird if California would get all the nations GDP. In practice this doesn't happen---but if it ever did, we'd need a new measure to correlates with all the good things we actually care about.
      - riazrizvi 10y ago