The United States leads the world in dollars invested in research. It won’t for long: China plans to outpace it in the next four years. As a percent of their economy, Israel, Japan, South Korea, and Finland also all invest more in research than the United States does.

So could this country handle research and development better? Here are some common answers—and the problems they face.

ANSWER

There’s no need to read any further: As this 2013 paper from Cato Unbound argues, it’s folly for the government to fund public science. Terence Kealey, a sociologist of science, argues that scientific research is not a public good—and, regardless, investment in, and the advancement of, science will occur regardless of who pays for it. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, after all, did not have DARPA. Following Kealey’s argument, and considering past examples, research should be concentrated in industries, alongside “an armamentarium of private philanthropic funders of university and of foundation science by which non-market, pure research (including on orphan diseases) would be funded.”

QUESTION

The first question we must ask: What the hell’s an armamentarium? “A collection of resources available for a certain purpose,” answers the New Oxford American, supplying the more concise arsenal as a synonym. But I digress.

Kealey imagines the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and other organizations like it stepping in to fund basic research. Right now, he says, money from those organizations are getting crowded out. So how would he answer Bill Gates himself, who in the pages of this magazine called for the U.S. government to triple its energy investment funding? Gates himself says he would only invest (patiently, at great risk, and looking to the long term) “the spin-offs that will come out of that government-funded activity.”

To fit Kealey’s vision, how far back would government funding have to be rolled? In a response to his critics, Kealey approvingly cites a 19th-century scientist who implies the United States should not set standards in high technology. But when the United States has tried this recently, things haven’t turned out so peachily.

In 1984, the Federal Communications Commission declined to declare one standard for stereophonic sound in AM radio, saying the market would decide. The market didn’t. Music stations left the AM band for FM, and, by the early 2000s, there were almost no AM providers still broadcasting in stereo. Through a laissez faire regulatory scheme, the United States lost an entire radio band—and the potential economic value that would result. (Seriously, the consequences of this were huge. Imagine if AM sounded as clear as FM!)

Kealey would reject this example as “anecdotal,” but I think the best questions to pose to any straight-up rejection of government R&D funding are along these lines. That is, the best argument for preserving successful government programs are small-c conservative.