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There's also the subsidies provided by CCP central planners to consider. This subsidizes consumption in their target markets. I appreciate the strategic concer

There's also the subsidies provided by CCP central planners to consider. This subsidizes consumption in their target markets. I appreciate the strategic concerns. However, the obvious benefit of a foreign nation subsidizing your consumption shouldn't be overlooked. Some of the knee-jerk reactions to central planning suggest that the western nations should emulate the CCP's statist system. To be sure there are pragmatic concerns, but more concerning is the race to the bottom of top down planning this creates. Government bureaus will always find a rationale to expand purview of the state. Specifically, if photovoltaic solar isn't cost effective without subsidies, then why use it? When the state chooses winners and losers, it distorts the incentive based progression of technology. By narrowly focusing on artificially profitable PV solar, more efficient innovations may be overlooked. There's always an unseen cost when central planners misallocate resources away from profitable industries. Pragmatists' best case might be that strategic concerns outweigh the losses of productivity and employment.

nine_k 6y ago
The problem is that you never know where better optima lie. You have to guess. It is easiest when a new optimum is easy to reach by just following the gradient. Short-term thinking works well here. There may be some optima much farther down, which take a lot of "buried" investment to reach: efficient photovoltaics, electric cars, reusable space launch systems, maybe even fusion power. We know that some of them are better optima than the previous state, because they have been reached. Some, like fusion power, haven't been, but there is a lot of hope that they'll work. Some other attempts, like supersonic passenger aircraft, ended up not as optimal as their proponents had hoped. You never know. The problem is that you can only reach these distant goals by concentrating resources and spending them without an apparent commercial result for years and decades. This takes a high concentration of resources and a commitment. Currently only billionaires and certain national governments can afford that. Most public companies are too beholden to their quarterly results to follow long-term policies which do not bring steady profits along the way, and many governments are in the same situation because the voters do not care about long-term goals enough.

nine_k 6y ago

The problem is that you never know where better optima lie. You have to guess. It is easiest when a new optimum is easy to reach by just following the gradient. Short-term thinking works well here. There may be some optima much farther down, which take a lot of "buried" investment to reach: efficient photovoltaics, electric cars, reusable space launch systems, maybe even fusion power. We know that some of them are better optima than the previous state, because they have been reached. Some, like fusion power, haven't been, but there is a lot of hope that they'll work. Some other attempts, like supersonic passenger aircraft, ended up not as optimal as their proponents had hoped. You never know. The problem is that you can only reach these distant goals by concentrating resources and spending them without an apparent commercial result for years and decades. This takes a high concentration of resources and a commitment. Currently only billionaires and certain national governments can afford that. Most public companies are too beholden to their quarterly results to follow long-term policies which do not bring steady profits along the way, and many governments are in the same situation because the voters do not care about long-term goals enough.