There are anti-theses for the issue. Two criticizing the book mentioned:

https://mises.org/library/government-spending-innovation-tru...

and

http://pricesandmarkets.org/volume-3-issue-3-winter-2015/mar...

I wasn't totally convinced by the first linked essay. The primary arguments presented seem to be:

- Government funded development only gives the government what it wants while the citizens remain unsatisfied. This is due to a lack of "market tests". - We never tested the alternative where the government doesn't fund research and let private companies innovate instead.

Dr. Mazzucato addresses this in her book. She notes that the government needs to provide a pipeline from basic research to marketability. She also argues that the last twenty years, in various countries, have shown that trusting private companies to innovate doesn't give better returns. Also, I feel like Dr. Glein is over-simplifying Dr. Mazzucato's argument by claiming she argues that "many of the technologies and innovations we now value were produced single-handedly by government". Dr. Mazzucato routinely celebrates the ability of private companies to integrate innovative technologies for the public. She's mostly arguing that these companies should be taxed better (more efficiently? realistically?) by licensing the technologies.

However, the argument Dr. Glein links to (https://www.jstor.org/stable/116937?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...), is very interesting! It claims that R&D personnel are a finite resource and government funding crowds out the supply of talent for the private sector. I don't know why, but I thought the supply was elastic? Maybe because I over-idealize immigration?

The second essay seems to mostly re-iterate the importance of the "crowding out" effect. It also notes that Mazzucato got some data wrong because: "But in the thirties governments in the US did not fund long-term fundamental research, so companies did it themselves. Now that governments do fund long-term fundamental research, industry needs no longer do so: yet again Professor Mazzucato advocates the very policies that lead to the outcomes she deplores."

tl;dr people seem to be getting different conclusions from datasets I haven't seen and I need to do more research into the "crowding out effect"

> Government funded development only gives the government what it wants while the citizens remain unsatisfied. This is due to a lack of "market tests"

As much as I consider myself libertarian, this is where they go off the rocker.

Basic research cannot be market driven. Especially a market that's mostly worried about next quarter

Most of what we consider fundamental inventions have started in academia and were snubbed by the market, with very rare exceptions

Funnily enough those that have invested in basic research have reaped lots of results (like the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company)

Actually academia is not necessary dependent on Government. Universities can be private or privately funded and still do basic scientific research.

You can read an old piece on the issue from Murray Rothbard:

https://mises.org/library/science-technology-and-government-...

Yes but it's mostly funded by philanthropy and tax breaks.

Nobody does basic research thinking about a specific market issue

And it's not a new thesis, it has been noticed by various intellectuals at least for last 200 years.

Another relatively recent book on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Kicking-Away-Ladder-Development-Persp...

> (...) I started reading “How to Build a Brain” by Chris Eliasmith. By the end of it, I truly felt biologically plausible modelling was hugely important for the advance of Cognitive Science.

Does it give a biologically plausible explanation for backpropagation?

Biologically plausible back-prop is an ongoing investigation: https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/16269/4397

Basically, I'm waiting until Eric Hunsberger finishes his freaking PhD thesis: http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/people/eric-hunsberger.html

This blog post is now it's own thread if you want to continue the discussion there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14437952

That's a really interesting thesis that warrants its own HN thread

How would I phrase a HN thread with this topic without being polemic?

“The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths”

Is linking to my own blog post in bad taste? Should I link to the website of the book instead?

Linking to the blog post seems to be the better choice, but maybe include a link to the book's site in the post too.