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Well, if you'd like the anti-statist take on state innovation, how about this?

"The economy relies very heavily on the state sector. There is a lot of agony now about socialization of the economy, but that is a bad joke. The advanced economy, high technology and so forth, has always relied extensively on the dynamic state sector of the economy.

"That's true of computers, the internet, aircraft, biotechnology, just about everywhere you look. MIT, where I am speaking to you, is a kind of funnel into which the public pours money and out of it comes the technology of the future which will be handed over to private power for profit. So what you have is a system of socialization of cost and risk and privatization of profit. And that's not just in the financial system. It is the whole advanced economy." (http://www.stwr.org/global-financial-crisis/the-financial-cr...)

That's from Noam Chomsky, an anti-capitalist who favors forms of anarcho-syndicalism. Obviously, it's hard to bring up such opinions in polite company. Much easier to quote Mazzucato, who'll present the truth in a more politically correct way... :)

This comment is an example of the worst political commentary. It doesn't even try to make sense, and is more a form of paranoid, libertarian verbal diarrhoea than an actual reasoned argument.

Libertarians would have a much easier time living with the government if they just thought of it as a corporation, upon whose land they work, live and play.

The 15% income fee is merely the cost of doing business.

Welcome to Disneyland, ahem, I mean, America.

Oh, but the issue is not whether we think of something as a "corporation" or not. After all, that's just playing with words.

The issue is, what happens if you decide you don't want to do business with that entity anymore?

In case of state, the punishment is prison and, resisting that, death. That is the part that libertarians object to, and it doesn't matter whether that entity calls itself "corporation", "mafia" or "government".

And if it wasn't a government but instead a corporation, the only thing that would change is that you don't even get to vote!

What nonsense. In a free market economy, you vote every time you voluntarily accept an offer. Not voting for a corporation, a vote that costs you your own money, is a vote against it, because corporations die by default. If ever people stop accepting new offers, the corporation will die. They can't force you to accept an offer or to pay for an offer accepted by someone else.

With a government -- or a corporation supported by crony capitalism, which is just more government -- a program doesn't have to convince the payers that it's worth paying for. It just has to convince those with the power to take money from others by force to do so and give them some of it.

Incorrect. The libertarian government ideal is that the government's main purpose (and some would say sole purpose) should be to protect people against such occurrences. So there is most definitely a mechanism to protect people against aggression from those with more power; in fact, libertarianism is built on the principle which underlies it.

No, if you decide you don't want to do business with that entity anymore then you have to get off that entity's land. Just like if you decide that you don't want to do business with a parking lot company anymore, you have to move your car out of their parking lot. The punishment isn't for deciding not to do business with the government, it's for taking government services without paying for them. You won't go to prison or be killed for leaving the country.

"No, if you decide you don't want to do business with that entity anymore then you have to get off that entity's land."

Not if you believe that governments derive their power from the consent of the governed.

Even if governments do derive their power from the consent of the governed, the governed have consented to government sovereignty. That being the case, I don't follow your argument.

My argument is that of the American colonists seeking to throw off the shackles of their British masters.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

So governments own everything by default, and if you don't like it, just piss off (assuming they let you)? Leave your home country, give up, adieu?

You may be joking, or pushing a theoretical concept, I have no way of knowing. But coming from eastern Europe, I find this world view of your-life-as-leased-from-government disturbing.

Because you know, the next step to "the government owns all lands" is "government owns all babies, and if they don't like how you raise it, they'll 'take it back'". It's all been here before.

Your life isn't leased from government, your land is, and while you choose to live on their land you must follow their rules or deal with the consequences of not doing so. You can make all the slippery slope arguments you want, but they won't change that reality.

And while you may think you have some great solution, wherein you can be sovereign on your land and somehow not have to personally defend it from nation-state level adversaries, those of us acquainted with the real world know this not to be the case. So, we end up with governments, and those governments are generally pretty shit, but they beat the hell out of the alternative.

If you really want sovereignty, then rather than wasting time with the typical libertarian bullshit, whining about how taxes are violence and so on and so forth, you should instead be putting everything you have behind space exploration. The only practical return to individual sovereignty is the return of sufficient unclaimed land, and the only way for that to happen without a lot of people dying is for us to raise our sights to living other places than Earth.

Do you have any idea where humanity would be if we followed your advise? "Accept the status quo, or piss off to Mars"? Seriously?

Do you know how USA itself was formed?

You sound like a somewhat uninspiring, jaded person, but that's your problem. I just don't like people spreading FUD. There's a lot that can be done, here on Earth, to improve liberty and individual freedom. Which is, by the way, not mutually exclusive with supporting space exploration (false dilemma).

You need to read what I'm actually saying instead of assuming that I fit your archetype for ‘opponent in a dialog’. You still completely misunderstand my stance despite my having belabored the point extensively. Your claim was as follows:

> The issue is, what happens if you decide you don't want to do business with that entity anymore?

> In case of state, the punishment is prison and, resisting that, death.

My claim is that if you stay on that government's land, you are not in fact choosing not to do business with that entity. Period, nothing more.

Nowhere did I claim that you have to accept the status quo. Nowhere did I claim that nothing can be done to improve liberty or individual freedom. Those are positions that you attributed to me because you aren't arguing against me, you're arguing against a straw man instead of taking the time to understand what I'm telling you.

Space exploration isn't necessary to improve liberty or individual freedom, it's necessary for a return to individual sovereignty without many people dying. You're welcome to improve liberty or individual freedom all you want, either from inside the country or outside of it. What you can't do is live inside of the country but somehow consider yourself above that country's laws because you have an eternal inalienable right to sovereignty. No government recognizes that right, because if they did governments could not function. You can have life, you can have liberty, you can have pursuit of happiness. Sovereignty is not on that list.

> The state is a mixed bag.

No argument there :-)

> They currently take 15% of my income to pay for my "retirement" when if I had been able to save that I'd end up far more secure in my retirement than I will with social security.

You would, but many others wouldn't. The point of collective plans like this is that it spreads the wealth around to people who otherwise wouldn't have any. Whether you think this is fair is another discussion entirely, but that's what it's meant to do and it does it reasonably well.

> Mix that with the constant wars

This is a problem, yes. The state has little incentive not to be wasteful and the US state has been particularly wasteful in this regard.

> There are a lot of other odd statements in here too such as describing the state as a risk taker as if the state is ever punished for its' failures.

Which is the point, I think. The state can afford to take risks precisely because it won't ever be punished for failures. This leads to waste, but it also allows for investments to be made in endeavors that would be far too risky for a party subject to market forces to take on.