“Across the entire
innovation chain, from basic research to commercialization, governments have
stepped up with needed investment that the private sector has been too scared
to provide. This spending has proved transformative, creating entirely new
markets and sectors, including the Internet, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and
clean energy.”[1]
In this Foreign
Affairs article, Mariana Mazzucato argues that government has the capital
and power to take the risks the private sector won’t. The results, as quoted
above, are advances and discoveries that we frankly would not want to live
without today. The investment and involvement of the government has created
whole new markets, thousands of jobs, and significant progress.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Mazzucato doesn’t stop there though. She lists many examples
of great success due to government loans when no one else would fund certain
research and development such as all the components in an iPhone, or the all-electric
car produced by Tesla Motors, as well as the innovating behemoth Google.
She also gives a few examples where it was a financial sink
hole for the government. She calls for reform, to make it better and easier for
the government to obtain more gain from the success and not just be stuck with
the failures. She explained, “it requires fundamentally reconsidering the
traditional role of the state in the economy.”
This got me thinking.
To fundamentally change the traditional role of the state, what
is the “fundamental role” in the
first place?
The Black Belt in Freedom mentoring program with Oliver
DeMille covers Frederic Bastiat’s power-packed little essay, The Law, where Oliver and Bastiat take this
question head on.
They break it down like this:
In a free society, the proper role of government is to
protect life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Period. Anything
else leads to less freedom.
And that’s the catch.
I’m not saying that Mazzucato is wrong, neither am I arguing
that she’s right. But if the fathers and mothers of today, if the business men
and women, if the leaders of each sector[2]
don’t know how the proposed solutions to the problems we face right now compare
to natural law, then freedom will decrease and the generations to come will be
less free until they can’t be free—and
not being free is unnatural.
When government has to fill in the gaps where other leaders
aren’t magnifying their roles in society, it comes at a cost. That cost is
almost always a decrease in freedom. If private individuals won’t heed the call
to be leaders in society, if we won’t innovate, if we won’t support those who
need the help, if we won’t provide opportunity, if we won’t be actively engaged
in a good cause—in short, if we won’t fund freedom—government agencies and
institutions are more than willing to step in and take that role from us.
But government is force, and it doesn’t relinquish power
very easily.
Besides, how many businesses
failed or innovations stalled because governments regulated and taxed at the high
rates that gave them access to the money they loaned? How many innovators would
have flourished more, earlier or simply done better without such government
intervention? There is a reason many private institutions are more afraid to
risk nowadays—and that reason is government.
The need for regular people to stand up, to become their own
unique type of leader, to immerse themselves into the great conversation is as
great as ever in today’s world of rapidly expanding government programs and
benefits.
It’s time for people like you and me to dig into the great
ideas, to become fluent in our inalienable rights and our inalienable duties, and
to understand, live by, and protect natural law in all spheres of society.
Ian Cox
