I just got this question from someone talking about how we need government for research. The only problem is that I'm not well versed in economic history. Any ideas?
Yes, I am a huge Dodgers fan.
Anti-state since I learned about the Cuban Revolution and why my dad had to flee the country.
Beer, Guns and Baseball My blog
well...the sex (porn, sex toys) industry may be one.
and perhaps beer and wine (vineyards) and spirits...before any nationalization really took hold.
just check the economic activities prior to nation states, that is if you differentiate monarchy or tribalism from the nation state.
Cars perhaps?
Fashion industry.
What makes for "an industry" is arbitary. If you make kerosine for night lamps, is this petroleum industry, or is it lighting industry, or is it chemical industry?
Almost all companies do research and development, to make better products. It doesn't matter if it's agriculture, medicine, cars, guns, computers, phones, whatever. Free markets create enormous amounts of RaD. For instance, Nintendo spends (perhaps "spent", I heard this a while ago) more on RaD than the (American) Federal Department of Education.
Periodically the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.
Thomas Jefferson
tonyfernandez: I just got this question from someone talking about how we need government for research.
I just got this question from someone talking about how we need government for research.
It's an unfortunately common fallacy that government is "needed" for research. As in other fields, what it tends to do is bid and "crowd out" away resources that would have been allocated by the private sector towards productive uses. Hence you get large allocations and expansions in areas useful for the welfare/warfare state and industrial complex. What is most amazing is that whatever trifles come as consumer benefits from such wasteful projects are used to herald the state and its education system as the great beacon of technological development. Terence Kealey, the Vice Chancellor of the University of Buckingham and one of the UK's very few prominet liberatrians has written on this subject. You may be interested in having a look:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sex-Science-Profits-Terence-Kealey/dp/0434008249
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
Many statists have convictions that if it weren't for gov't then we wouldn't have interstate highways or railways. They also claim that without NASA and/or the space agency (race to the moon) we wouldn't have things like GPS or other advancements that were "dictated" by gov't planning. You can argue until blue in the face about all the things we have missed out on by not having these minds or capital free to be allocated by the free. They think man kind would never have progressed above a level where people live in small isolated villages living simple lives like savages. They will never see it any other way.
Government takes up 40% of our GDP. They sure as hell don't account for 40% of all inventions, much less useful ones.No one ever says: "Imagine life without velcro? So many things wouldn't work"
Terence Kealey is not a libertarian.
He's not, but this is an awesome video on this issue.
Why anarchy fails
tonyfernandez: I just got this question from someone talking about how we need government for research. The only problem is that I'm not well versed in economic history. Any ideas?
This is my answer:
http://www.vforvoluntary.com/wiki/ScientificResearch
Caley McKibbin: Terence Kealey is not a libertarian.
My mistake... serves me right for treating my broad impressions as facts. What is he considered to be may I ask?