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1) Fund lots of science.

Why do we need this? By every metric I know of, governments spend orders of magnitude more on science than they did in the 1800s. Are we getting orders more "Profit!"?

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You can't split atoms with a chisel, nor email the international space station with telegraph lines. The discoveries possible with 1800-vintage equipment are mostly already made, so now we have to spend orders of magnitude more to learn anything new. And I'd much rather we roll the dice again and keep looking, not just wait and see how civilization survives the decline of oil and fertilizer.

Could you clarify your metrics and sources?

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/53/41558958.pdf tells me that non-commercial (government or government-subsidized) R&D represents ~1% of GDP in 2006 for the US. I believe equivalent figures for the 1800s would be closer to 0% R&D inasmuch as there were no Departments of Energy, Health & Human Services, etc., but I'm willing to be proven wrong. Maybe the Gilded Age governments in the US actually spent 2% of GDP on R&D.

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