Abundance

by Ezra Klein

economist Mariana Mazzucato pointed out in The Entrepreneurial State, it is strange that we still debate whether 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. We live in a ripely picked world. The smartest question, then, is not if the government should intervene in markets, but how to do so.