John McCain asks a Question on LinkedIn

I was adding a colleague on LinkedIn earlier today and noticed a question from John McCain.  He essentially asks: "What new technologies or new ideas should we be investing in today?"

Though I obviously disagree with Mr. McCain on his desire to have the government solve the problem, I do think that it's an interesting strategy for a candidate (or anyone famous) to ask questions like this on LinkedIn.

I responded with the following and encourage you to join in the debate, especially with a Libertarian perspective!

“You are absolutely right that the government has thrown around too much money in subsidies. So who is the "we" you reference? "The fatal conceit" is to assume that you, Obama, or any other government official can divine a solution to the energy crisis. You might be right when you bet, but more likely, you'll be wrong. To maximize success trust in and encourage a free market. The profit motive is stronger than any kind of subsidy or reward that the government artificially creates.”

Oh, and you can always connect to me (Mark Johnson) on LinkedIn.

Comments

[Sameer]

Mark,

in your response to McCain, you state that "[t]he profit motive is stronger than any kind of subsidy or reward that the government artificially creates.”

Why should the government not be able to create a profit motive? The government doesn't have to create some warm and fuzzy, non-profit-oriented social motive that somehow attempt to entice individuals away from profit. Instead, if we view the government as providing different tactics, usually those that support some policy that has a mandate, that companies can pursue in order to make profit, then the role of the government is not at all inimical to the free market. The ultimate goal can still remain profit, but the ends that are achieved would now include the public good.

[Mark Johnson]

I know there's a way to comment on my own blog. Until then. . . artificially created profit motive is not. Because then the motive is to get the artificial gain, which is not tied to any kind of real-world economic gain (of course it may be, but it may not). Now, you can argue that the government is just as accurate as individuals as deciding what fails/succeeds, but you'd be wrong (and history supports this). I should write a more detailed post on this thread.

[Sameer]

I would certainly like to read a more detailed post. I don't think that any non-monetary gain added by a governing body, when linked to some monetary gain, necessarily performs worse, from a public good perspective, than if all the gains are decided via the free market. The free market is composed of human players just as a government is, and is as prone, if not more, than a democratically elected government, to creating perverse incentives or being driven by ego and greed, thus preventing the creation of a monetary goal that reflects the public good. Once one accepts that such a situation will frequently arise, and will need correction, that acceptance starts the inexorable journey down the path towards theorizing a government into existence. The libertarian hope of preventing such an entity from arising is as idealistic as believing all people to be essentially virtuous --- or perhaps as unrealistic as believing people to be omniscient.

James Surowiecki writes in his customarily lucid style in the latest issue of the New Yorker, on just this issue (with a particular focus on the deficiencies of ungoverned individual property rights, in http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2008/08/11/080811ta_talk_surowiecki?yrail

The first paragraph sets the tone of his arguments well (and I hardly need to add my own summary here):

"In the second decade of the twentieth century, it was almost impossible to build an airplane in the United States. That was the result of a chaotic legal battle among the dozens of companies—including one owned by Orville Wright—that held patents on the various components that made a plane go. No one could manufacture aircraft without fear of being hauled into court. The First World War got the industry started again, because Congress realized that something needed to be done to get planes in the air. It created a “patent pool,” putting all the aircraft patents under the control of a new association and letting manufacturers license them for a fee. Had Congress not stepped in, we might still be flying around in blimps."

[Sameer]

Mark:

am adding this dummy comment to enable tracking via coComment. Hope you don't mind...

If only TP allowed commenters to track posts and comments...

s.