>My point being, these examples show that, without market forces, the government has no indicator as to what’s worth allocating resources to and what’s not. Th

>My point being, these examples show that, without market forces, the government has no indicator as to what’s worth allocating resources to and what’s not. This supposes that the only things worth allocating resources to are things which would be successful in the market place. He mentions public goods in this essay so I know that he's aware of them, why does he ignore their existence here? >Shifting focus from the public sector to the private, the idea that entrepreneurs and corporations are somehow worse at innovating, or don’t invest enough in R&D, is also called into question by many examples to the contrary. Like SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk with the goal of one day colonizing Mars,which recently accepted a $1 billion investment from Google and Fidelity. Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015... Hmm. He also presupposes that public R&D spending will drive out private R&D but that is actually an open economic question. (lots of studies showing them to be complements and lots showing them to be substitutes) This short survey demonstrates that existing empirical studies do not allow for a definitive conclusion regarding the sign of the relationships between publicly and privately funded R&D. Hence, it is still an open empirical question as to whether public R&D funding increases or decreases privately funded R&D. In order to answer this question, more research with more comprehensive datasets is needed. http://aei.pitt.edu/6736/1/1195_30.pdf http://aei.pitt.edu/6736/1/1195_30.pdf >As Ludwig von Mises so eloquently put it... Ah come on, I am so tired of libertarians whose entire economic education comes from reading other libertarian blogs online. Please quote some living economists, maybe even an economist who is still publishing papers. When will we realize this (specific) sort of libertarian for what they are, a utopian. The market can't solve every problem, that's why we have governments in the first place.