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I don't think it's reasonable to count incidental benefits from projects, such as the WWW from CERN. The same basic problem of sharing information between scientists would still have existed without CERN, and who's to say it or something even better, with fewer of HTTP/HTML's limitations wouldn't have been developed if TBL had been working on a different project?

The space race argument is another old sore, it turns out many of the discoveries ascribed to it were actually developed independently, but then were used by NASA who ended up getting the credit. Teflon is often cited, but was actually discovered in 1938 and patented in 1945.

Yes a lot of great technologies were developed for Apollo and used in other areas, but many or perhaps all of them would have been developed eventually anyway.

I don't think it's reasonable to discount all the subproducts from such an investment just because many would have been developed eventually anyway.

In this vein, it's just as easy to discount the people who did the inventions/discoveries because someone else would have eventually made the discovery/invention anyway.

Of course that the main project has to be sound, and cannot be justified only due to the subproducts, but "would have happened anyway" is not a solid argument to discount the subproducts, mainly because you cannot know if it would, nor when it would.

Consider the invention of the airplane. The Wrights certainly invented it, but if you take a good look at what the other experimenters were doing, it's a pretty good bet that others would have gotten the pieces together in probably another 5 years.

(The Wrights succeeded arguably because they had the first directed research & development program, while the others basically just bumbled about trying things in a seat-of-the-pants manner. None of them, for example, seem to have done any calculation of how much wing area was needed or how much power was required.)

On the other hand, consider how vaccination was invented or any other "accidental" discovery/invention.

I'm aware that there are inventions that even happen at almost exactly the same time, especially when the research on the subject is ripe enough.

But when chance is a factor or the subject is not researched enough (or at all) then the confidence of an hypothesized invention happening in a close timeframe to the actual invention diminishes greatly.

Governments are quite often rather inefficient, but they are really large. For example, rockets could not have been developed by private enterprise, because it took something like thirty years (and substantial investment) to build somewhat reliable rockets. [1]

A bit more abstract: businesses are good at small incremental development steps, since most of the steps need to have a market. In contrast a government can invest in projects which are both very long term and very expensive, because they have a reliable revenues (taxes).

[1]much longer version of the argument: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2011/0...

Theere's a basic role of government that's widely agreed upon - that it keeps us from hurting one another and clarity on the use of roads and telecommunications channels and the like. And I realise that opinions diverge above that, but I'll put mine.

Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient, and seems like a bad place to look for inspiration in engineering. When governments set up things like NASA they become political institutions themselves. It's easy for them to grow into organisations that seek self-preservation and always more money to support the glamour of their leadership.

When government gets involved in a field, you get a cross-polination between field-experts and government people. Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving.

Given all these problems, I don't think we should be attracted to the idea of governments taxing us to spend the money on difficult-to-quantify never-never projects. They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

> They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

Or, if you agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing: Tax carbon usage, and, since you don't like the government spending money, just distribute the proceeds equally among the population. This works out to a net impact, modulo transactions costs, on the average carbon-emitting person of zero, but rewards and punishes the outliers.

A lot of the reason why there is no natural incentive to develop new sources of energy is that the government works hand in hand with energy companies to prevent it for example, via drilling rights, subsidized prices making it uneconomical to research better sources because the companies can guarantee their profits.

What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? What if I think that the tax is too high? What if I have higher priorities?

> What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing?

Then my comment doesn't apply.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

The level of the tax should be chosen so, that you get the societal optimal output of CO_2. Where the measure of optimality is choosen by some mechanism, e.g. some form of democracy or so, outside of the scope of my suggestion.

If you actually want to have a high carbon-future, you might even opt for a negative tax, i.e. subsidy. The `proceeds' that get divided equally would turn into costs. If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them. But with a tax that's too high you would get less CO_2 emissions than your society would agree on as optimal. With a tax that's too low, you'd get more total emissions than people would agree on. At the moment our situation is essentially equivalent to a tax/redistribution of zero.

> Then my comment doesn't apply.

You're still going to tax me....

> The level of the tax should be chosen so

In other words, "lump it".

> If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

You're not going to let me.

> For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them.

That can't be true if the result is lower CO2 emissions.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you're not going to compensate small scale CO2 sequestration. (It would be too costly to do so, but the result is the same - your scheme can't treat all CO2 the same even though your reason for taxing CO2 says that it is.)

Under this model, how would we end up with something like the Interstate Highway system?

Hopefully we wouldn't have! I'd rather have had more intact city cores and fewer drivers.

Probably my major objection to the system, urban freeways, didn't have to be part of the system, and Eisenhower apparently personally did not want them to be, see http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.htm#question23a Having destructive elements added to a giant plan usually seems to come with selling it though.

The German energy plan described in the article I'd bet involves a lot of tradeoffs to get support from various players. It sounds way riskier than say just more massively taxing carbon emissions and subsidizing energy R&D. But presumably those aren't politically feasible.

Another political infeasibility (I'd guess) that surely has been suggested elsewhere: Germans should instead get a large % of solar energy (or derived revenues) produced in southern Europe to pay for bailouts. This would also mean solar panels deployed more effectively, and local Greek, etc, labor employed for installation.

I also think government dilutes the effectiveness of the experts it employs, but at the same time the private sector is amazingly, exceedingly incapable of seeing benefit from anything but immediate profits. Investing in highly risky pilot programs which have high costs and uncertain benefits is something the private sector, except perhaps a few optimistic billionaires, would never do. If we had never supported difficult-to-quantify never-never projects, we wouldn't be finding exoplanets, we would have never discovered that asteroids are clumps of unfathomably abundant resources, we would have never gotten to the Moon, and Europeans would never have explored the New World, because the benefits at the time seemed dubious and the funding came from governments.

I am optimistic just because I have a high amount of trust for German government. They are a lot more cautious and less bandwagon-hopping and more capable of pulling stuff like this off whereas for most other industrialized governments the Energiewende would just be a dramatic stage show created by former-execs-turned-bureaucrats to put taxpayer dollars into contractor's pockets without any concern for actual results.

I think you're overlooking the age of exploration, funded mostly by private interests, and things like the first transatlantic cable.

Ah, but maybe he's not overlooking, for one example, the broadband monopoly or (essentially non-competitive) duopoly that exists in contemporary American society.

Compare what we've got with countries where the government owns the physical medium and leases it to a variety of bit-carriers--it's tough to argue against that kind of observable evidence.

There are plenty of cases where government stewardship of the playing field--with private companies competing on that playing field--works out for the great benefit of the citizenry.

"Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient" [citation needed]

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Oh, it was all opinion.

That's fine.

In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector (ever seen the waste and mismanagement going on in these huge megacorps? it's insane!), and by definition can be _more_ cost-effective than the private sector because there is no need to turn a profit. Private businesses have, built in, a bit of skimming off the top for the owners (and there's nothing wrong with that, of course--that's part of why people start businesses), and government-run services by definition do not. They're not profit-seeking services. They're public services.

(You may disagree on what ought to be a public service, but once we're all on the same page that the government ought to do some things, it's just a matter of hashing out what those ought to be...)

Also...wait... NASA has grown into an organization that works for the glory of its leadership? what? sorry...again...what?

During the 20th century there were many attempts at government-directed economies, some very large. In every instance they underperformed free market economies.

We tried it. It doesn't work as well.

I didn't say anything about a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy, either.

... Hey, I discovered a great site the other day:

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

You said "In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector." Directly refuting you is not a strawman.

I'm sorry, maybe you can explain it like I'm five.

What does the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the public or private sector have to do with a centrally-planned economy?

Or, let me be charitable (because I think I know what you were getting at...) and instead put it to you this way:

Let's say government-financed or government-run health care is more efficient or more cost-effective than privately-run health care, because there's no privately-run insurance company that exists to extract a bit of dosh from every doctor-patient transaction.

(And safe money's on government-financed/run health care buying better health care for its citizens, dollar for dollar and measuring on a variety of health outcomes. I've seen a lot of arguments from theory that "more free markets, less regulation" would do as good a job, or better, but I haven't seen evidence of that, just arguments from theory.)

Does this mean that a country that adopts a single-payer or government-run health care system for its citizens has _also_ adopted a centrally planned--or in your words, "government-directed"--economy?

I think we are getting hung up on different usages of the word "efficient."

Government can be efficient at delivering a well-defined service, or meeting a well-defined goal. For example Medicare is a pretty efficient program, and we did make it to the Moon with NASA.

Efficiency can also refer to the allocation of capital toward innovations with the greatest expected payoff or outcome. This is where freely operating private markets outperformed government planning by a large margin during the 20th century.

I thought we were discussing this usage of "efficient" since cturner referred to "picking winners".

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Citation provided: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#American_exa...

"has there ever been a large-scale public investment program into science and engineering (that ISN'T based on destroying things in new and exciting ways) that has not proved to be a good investment in the long run"

Having been on large EU funded projects (all part of the ESPRIT II program), I honestly can't believe that they provided good value for money. Now there might have been a lot of indirect benefits, but I'm not aware of the results of the projects I worked on being directly used by anyone.

Also the US Space Shuttle had a cost 1000-fold cost overrun, if measured by cost to orbit per unit of mass.

Being German and having voted Green most of my life (until the pirate party came along), I still watch those energy subsidies with suspicion. I am just not certain the money is spent in an efficient way here. As for the jobs in the green energy sector, apparently China already (or still) is cheaper than Germany in producing solar power cells. So much for that investment.

"apparently China already (or still) is cheaper than Germany in producing solar power cells"

Yeah, but that's because China can violate any worker rights under the Sun, and pollute as much as it wishes in the process (and producing solar cells pollutes quite a bit).

What's the problem?

You close the nukes so everyone with an "Atomkraft Nein Danke" sticker on their VW votes for you.

You give huge feed in tarrif subsidy to anyone who owns a house to put panels on their roof - so the countryside votes for you.

You continue to subsidize coal so the Ruhr votes for you. But burn the coal in Poland and ship the power back - so there is no acid rain to worry about.

A perfect (if expensive) solution for everyone (unless you live east of Poland)

Other countries ripping the technology off is part of the plan, as far as I understood it.

We can talk them into using less fossil fuels (probably won't work), or use incentives (which would again cost money), or we can create a by then cheap technology for getting Co2-free energy which will be stolen by everyone.

Comparing costs from climate change adaption and avoidance shows that avoidance is far cheaper - and in both cases the developed countries will have to carry the majority. (Just imagine the situation if half of Asia and Africa's harvests fail.)

The investment here is not just an economic one, it goes much further.

> So here's a question for the peanut gallery: has there ever been a large-scale public investment program into science and engineering (that ISN'T based on destroying things in new and exciting ways) that has not proved to be a good investment in the long run?

Does the superconducting super collider fulfill your criterias (let's forget for a minute that it is about destroying particles in new and exciting ways) ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider

Interesting, thanks. A reference from that page - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/may/10/crisis-... - suggests:

One thing that killed the SSC was an undeserved reputation for over-spending. There was even nonsense in the press about spending on potted plants for the corridors of the administration building. Projected costs did increase, but the main reason was that, year by year, Congress never supplied sufficient funds to keep to the planned rate of spending. This stretched out the time and hence the cost to complete the project. Even so, the SSC met all technical challenges, and could have been completed for about what has been spent on the LHC, and completed a decade earlier.

Leading one to believe that it was actually a good project that was stiffed by a congress in search of tax cuts. Who knows whether that's true, of course.

The economics are easy. Money on war 'invests' your resources into other countries (no return, negative return likely), vs. money on innovation and infrastructure in your own country (positive return, long-term; potential for making other things more efficient, more cost-efficient become higher).

Sorry, but that's nonsense, you cannot underestimate the impact of military technologies like jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue... The whole of the modern world is based on military tech. Plus you gainfully employ lots of people (e.g. teaching trades to people who haven't done well in mainstream education) and as a free bonus you get the defence of the realm.

You are comparing the benefits of war to the wrong base. The civilians wouldn't have just burned all the riches (like war literally does to some extent), but would have used it to develop new products, too.

Nowadays the military actually uses consumer electronics.

You need to separate contexts of war and innovation. An example, this innovation could come through a budget for space exploration, or other means of transportation. The world is based on science tech. Yes, a lot was discovered in science through military budgets, but it's not exclusive to being put into the military - which I think can easily be argued has huge wastes of resources just by looking at industrial complex structures.

>jet engines, radar, communications satellites, GPS, the internet, superglue

Don't forget computers: Turing's work relies heavily on his experiences working at Bletchley Park, ENIAC was designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, and the calculational needs of the Manhattan Project drove a lot of early computer development.

Yes, but Konrad Zuse was driven to do his early computers by the tedium of doing arithmetic by hand in his engineering bureau. So we would have gotten computers anyway.

Yes and no. It is true that Zuse's early work, starting in 1936, was done on his own and (I will grant) motivated by non-military calculations. But that early work was on a purely mechanical computer, like the analytical engine and the difference engine of Charles Babbage -- and no mechanical designs were ever realized (except much later as part of the "retrocomputing" movement when their computing capabilities were no longer needed). By the time Zuse started incorporating electrical relays into his designs, in 1939, he was a member of the German military. It looks like he might have left the German military before the end of the Nazi era, but that matters little because the whole of German society was organized around military needs and military goals.

More importantly, the argument that "we would have gotten X anyways" can be applied to almost any technological development. Speed of development is important, however, even if all you care about is whether humans reach a certain level of development eventually (because the longer it takes to reach that level, the greater the chance that one of many potential catastrophes causes humans to die out or to lose the ability to invent the radically new technologies).

Not ~5%GDP.

"the country will spend somewhere between $125 billion and "$250 billion on infrastructure expansion and subsidies in the next eight years—between 3.5 and 7 percent of Germany's 2011 GDP"

The sentence is a bit confusing but I think they mean this:

~5% of 2011 GDP / 8 years = ~0.6% 2011GDP per year.

The problem is that this money is spent not on how to make usable "green" energy but how to be more efficient in consuming gov's subsidies to "green" technologies.

Some large scale projects that come to mind include Panama Canal, USA Highway system, Alaskan pipeline although you could argue they did destroy some things.

You are equating spending towards merely manufacturing PV arrays and wind plants with spending on R&D, that is not the same thing. Apollo isn't even a remotely comparable program because that was the creation of new technologies. The comparable program here would be the interstate highway system, perhaps.