dippin

I am not suggesting at any point that government funded R&D is necessarily superior to private investing. Nor am I suggesting that the private sector R&D is a rip off of government research. You see, it is not necessary to believe these things in order to see a place for government investment in R&D. All it takes for one to believe that federally funded R&D is important is to believe that it does not crowd out private investment and that it has some positive impact on our knowledge base. And in fact most research suggests that increases in govt. R&D spending actually leads to increases in private R&D.

Because the only way that federally funded R&D can be seen as a waste is if it crowds out similar private investment, but that is simply not the case, because federally funded R&D is often aimed at either military innovations, basic research or, when it is applied to final products aimed at civilians, it is usually medical research. The private sector often builds on these to produce specific consumer products, and as such it is just as important and not necessarily a "rip off" of government research.

Cisco started building multiple protocol routers. It was their unique innovation, but that was based on things that were created or improved through federally funded research.

So as you see, the position that federally funded R&D is useful is much easier to sustain than the position that government spending on R&D is useless.