[Willie Green]

The suggestion that the government can also usefully encourage certain industries over others is also an idea that is neither new, nor efficacious in practice.

Yeah, the technological advances that were spun-off from the Space Program were a dismal failure. </sarcasm>

[Torie]

Government involvement in research is another matter. Some research is so economically risky and expensive that there is an argument that the government has a useful niche there, because private companies cannot capture all of the benefits of such research that pays off (ie, there are positive economic externalities). Ditto with subsidizing certain university research.

One must try to avoid mixing up apples and oranges.

[edwin hubble]

"The suggestion that the government can also usefully encourage certain industries over others is also an idea that is neither new, nor efficacious in practice."

One doesn't have to be an advocate of Big Government to see this:

Government policies and programs ensured the success of:

1. the canal over the turnpike
2. the railroad over the canal

3. Government built the commercial aviation business.(Gov't owns and runs the airports and all air traffic control).

4. the government's space program gave us much of today's communications,

5. the government's space program gave us many of the advances that led to the computer as we know it.

5. the government (darpanet; DoD, DoE) gave us the beginnings of the internet. (not Al)