Abundance

by Ezra Klein

the government ought to pick winners when it is obvious that we live in a world that has amply “picked” for us.46 When you use an iPhone, you are playing with a technology that bundles silicon chips, the internet, GPS, voice-recognition software, and multi-touch technology, which were in part funded by the Defense Department, NIH, the National

Science Foundation, and other government entities.47 If you heat and cool your home with power drawn from natural gas, you’re tapping into an energy revolution that began with federal research into drilling shale formations. If you own a home in the suburbs, you drive down state-funded roads with federally subsidized mortgages.

“The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to

do them a little better or a little worse; but to do those things which at present are not done at all,”

Starting in the 1980s, the government cut its

support for medical schools and medical students, and many universities agreed to freeze the number of new studies and stop construction on medical programs. Between 1980 and 2005, the number of medical-school matriculants essentially flatlined69 as the US added 70 million people.70

push funding pays for effort, pull funding pays for success.

Warp Speed used both. With push funding, it covered the early expenses of several vaccine makers. With pull funding, it promised to buy a certain number of vaccine doses, provided that the therapies received FDA authorization.

“advance market commitment,”