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Does Government Science Funding Drive Innovation? (wsj.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, British businessman and science journalist Matt Ridley argues that basic science research does not lead to technological innovation, and therefore isn't deserving of taxpayer funding. Ridley says, "Increasingly, technology is developing the kind of autonomy that hitherto characterized biological entities. The Stanford economist Brian Arthur argues that technology is self-organizing and can, in effect, reproduce and adapt to its environment. ... The implications of this new way of seeing technology—as an autonomous, evolving entity that continues to progress whoever is in charge—are startling. People are pawns in a process. We ride rather than drive the innovation wave. Technology will find its inventors, rather than vice versa.
Patents and copyright laws grant too much credit and reward to individuals and imply that technology evolves by jerks. Recall that the original rationale for granting patents was not to reward inventors with monopoly profits but to encourage them to share their inventions. ... It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."
Patents and copyright laws grant too much credit and reward to individuals and imply that technology evolves by jerks. Recall that the original rationale for granting patents was not to reward inventors with monopoly profits but to encourage them to share their inventions. ... It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."
also known originally as ARPANET, was born as a goverment project, which ended as one of the greatest achievement of the humanity in term of global communication. Do I really need to say anything else?
Stupidity is the root of all evil.
Basic science doesn't "drive" innovation, but basic science sure as hell enables innovation.
Einstein published his work on general relativity in 1915. The GPS system (which requires a knowledge of general relativity to design) began development in 1973.
Einstein published his work on stimulated emission in 1916. The first laser (which requires a knowledge of stimulated emission to design) was built in 1960.
For those keeping score, those are gaps of 58 and 44 years, respectively, to go from basic science to innovation. Neither of those innovations were simply bumbled into by tinkerers. The designers knew the science from the get-go, and the inventions would not have happened without knowing the science from the get-go. The days of Edison and similar tinkerers has long passed. Good luck inventing any modern technology by chance. The low hanging fruit have already been picked.
From TFA:
It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them.
Industry does not function on the timespan of 4, 5, or 6 DECADES. There is zero chance that modern industry could do that.* The argument in TFA is total bullshit.
*That said, once upon a time industry did kind of do this _a little_. I did research with Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUIDs), and I decided to look into the history of the devices. Where was the first SQUID made? Ford (the car company) research labs back in 1963 ( http://journals.aps.org/prl/ab... ). Once upon a time, large corporations were flush with cash and without shareholders who wanted to wring every ounce of profit from them, so corporations _sometimes_ funded basic research just because they could -- _sometimes_ without applications in mind. However, that has long gone the way of the dodo. And no, they didn't abandon the business because the government was funding it instead. Modern corporations will never spend the money to do real basic research because it is not economically useful (either in 1963 or now) to invent something and have someone else use it 5 decades later. They learned that lesson decades ago. Ford has never made use of a SQUID, and real applications are still on the horizon (tho they may not be far away today).
Not to disagree with your point but the Americans seem to be the first to group copyright and patents together.
Modern copyright law was based on advancing learning which is what was meant in late 18th century English by the "Arts and Sciences" and the Statute of Anne was properly titled something like "An act for the encouragement of learning by giving a limited monopoly on writings"
Patents historically were about advancing manufacturing, often abused to give an income to the Crown, eg selling a patent on salt. The first modern patent law, at least in common law countries, was the "Statute of Monopolies" passed in 1624 which revoked most monopolies excepting those granted for new "methods of manufacture" with "manufacture" at the time covering both creation and design and lasted for up to 14 years. Note that there was no disclosure clause, perhaps because disclosure was considered automatic in that simpler time.
Also of interest in the act was it removed private monopolies on dispensing justice and enforcing penal laws. In other words the start of government having the sole right to violence to enforce law.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You do know that libertarianism was originally a socialist ideal and was that way for a hundred years before the Americans twisted it into its current entitlement form (I got mine and its mine)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism