Mariana Mazzucato's interesting economic argument

Alberto Mingardi, one of those we around here think to be a top bloke, has an excellent analysis of the rather, umm, interesting economic ideas of Mariana Mazzucato over at Cato. Mazzucato it the one who insists that because all of the components of the Apple iPhone had their start in some government research grant or other then the government should be owning a piece of Apple. To really cover the issues with this line of thinking please do read the whole of Mingardi's piece. For a flavour though, he notes an interesting thought. Which is that this obviously didn't happen with the original Industrial Revolution because government didn't fund anything other than the military and the debt back in those days. So it's clearly not necessary that government fund research, despite Mazzucato's insistence that it must. And we can then go one step further: not that government has its mitts all over 40% of everything in the economy it would really be rather surprising if something as complex as a smartphone didn't have some fort of series of connections to said state. Because it's got connections to rather large parts of that economy that the state has its mitts all over, of course.

Again, well worth reading.

And we must also turn to a more speculative reading of this situation. Do understand that this is entirely opinion. And it is our opinion that it's a very interesting fact that the first governmental R&D funding organisation to adopt Mazzucato's prescriptions is that of the European Union. The latest round of EU funding for R&D will indeed insist that the EU should take part in any financial rewards that develop out of any research or even D that it has funded.

And the original research by Mazzucato that led to the conclusion that this should be done was funded by the EU. An EU which we very well know would love to have its "own resources", that is funding that it doesn't get by going cap in hand to the national governments.

Again, let us be very clear indeed that this is opinion and opinion only, but we are of the opinion that there's a very definite whiff of policy driven evidence making in the air.