 Let's talk about government funding of science, which is unrelated to what we just talked about in a broad sense, but you hear this all the time. One of the things that the arguments you get from leftists, from anti-capitalists more broadly, from the statists of the left and of the right is that you cannot separate government for the economy. One is necessary. What happens if you don't have government is you get these quote called public goods. These are things that are created in the world that everybody benefits, that quote, public benefits from. What you get is undue investment in public goods because nobody has an incentive to invest in public goods because they can't capture the benefit. I don't know if this could be public parks, national parks, nobody can capture the benefit of that because they can't charge enough money to really capture how good this is. So the government has to do it. The government can spend the money. The government can organize. The government can do it. The government in a sense can do it at a loss because the government is representing the public and it's doing it for the common good. One of the most cited public goods, particularly among smart people, particularly among technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley types, one of the most cited public goods and among people I debate often is science. Science they tell us, and they're absolutely right, is absolutely essential for human progress. There's only so much you can produce, there's only so much you can create, there's so much you can innovate based on existing science. At some point you maximize what you can do with existing science or at least you do most of it and then you need a constant flow of new ideas, of new science, of new discoveries in order to get human progress. So one of the things you'll notice is that people who advocate, who talk about government funding of science as a public good, often people that are not like the people we just discussed, not hatred is a man, but people who actually want to see progress, they actually want to see scientific success, they actually want to see entrepreneurship, they're people who want to see new startups and new innovations and new business models. And for that what they need is what they argue for is we need science and they're right. There's no question the supply chain of business creation starts with science and then in a sense engineering and then production, with intermediated, if you will, by businesses that turn the science into great engineering into stuff that we all want to buy. But the driver long term, the driver long term of productivity increases, which is the driver of wage increases, which is the driver of increases in standard of living is innovation. And without, well, it's not innovation, it's science, which then is innovative off of. So innovation is what results in the final product. But what you need in order to innovate is a constant flow of new scientific discoveries. I mean, think about biotech today, think about new treatments for cancer, think about, you know, vaccines. But also think about all the science that has gone into ultimately getting us to the transistor and ultimately getting us to be able to put, I don't know what, several billion transistors on a tiny little chip inside a computer. So science has massive trickle down effects, at least some science, arguably some science has very little trickle down effects, but some science has massive trickle down effects. Science that is can be turned into practical achievements. So science, again, drives productivity. Science by innovation drives productivity. Productivity drives wages, wages drive standard of living, which drives demand, which drives consumption. There is no consumption without increases in consumption, without science. Science is the beginning of the process. You don't get an industrial revolution without a scientific revolution. You need a scientific revolution first before you get an industrial revolution, before you get a revolution of engineering and production. You need first to have a scientific revolution. You need to have the underlying science. So the argument goes, since the return on science is so high for the world, if you will, for the public, for people, but the ability of a scientist to capture the benefits of that science, monetarily, let's say, are so small, business is not going to invest in basic science, they're too removed from it. Einstein did not become a billionaire. I don't know of many scientists who have become billionaires. So what do we do? Because people are not going to invest the claim is in science. Now, this is an amazing claim given the history. I mean, the fact is that before 1940, before 1940, over 90 percent of all research and development was funded privately. So 90 percent of all research and development are granted. Some of that is development. But close to 90 percent of all the basic research was funded privately. Thomas Edison, that's more development, right, or more engineering, didn't get federal grants. Neither did Tesla, neither did, what's his name, the guy, Bell, who did the phones, neither did Rockefeller, who figured out, and many others, who hired chemists to develop the process of refining oil, which was not simple and not straightforward. We had massive innovations at universities, at private labs, by private entrepreneurs, in corporate laboratories that was not funded by the government, 90 percent. Now Bell Labs is a bit cheating. Bell Labs is one of the most amazing innovation machines that we had. Bell Labs really produced the scientists that ultimately led to the semiconductor business, but even the entire semiconductor, but even the venture capitalist world all came out of ultimately Bell Labs. Bell Labs is cheating because Bell Labs belonged to AT&T, to the telephone company, and AT&T had a monopoly granted by the government, protected by the government, on long distance, basically on phone service in the United States. As a consequence of that, they could set up a lab, spend a lot of money there without worrying about profitability, without worrying about consequence. They set up one of the most amazing labs ever. There's a fabulous book about Bell Labs, really, really interesting about the culture in it, the way it innovated, but it is a little cheating in a sense that it was a government protective monopoly. But still, the way it was run was very much run based on how a business would run a lab versus how a bureaucracy typically runs a lab. Now what's amazing is, what I think people don't realize is that today, even today, industry outspends government on R&D by three to one. So 75% of all the money spent today, even with big, huge, massive government involvement, government intervention, government regulation, and government spending on R&D, 75% of all the R&D in the United States is spent by business, by industry, by private philanthropy, by individuals, and only 25% is by government. Now a lot of that is development, not basic research, but here's a fact I didn't know which I found really interesting. Even when it comes to basic research. In 2015, I don't have updated numbers, but in 2015, federal government provided only 44% of basic research funding in the United States. Now how you define basic research versus development, I don't know exactly, but according to a survey done by the National Science Foundation, federal government only provides 44% of basic research, and industry provides or private sector provides the rest. What's interesting is that it was much worse in the 60s and 70s. In the 60s and 70s, the government was responsible for 70% of all basic research. So 44% of basic research today is funded by the government. Now what's interesting is that people have done work trying to look at how productive government grants are and how good the system is of granting government for basic research. And what they show is the more government seems to spend on basic research, the poorer the performance. That is that a lot of research is done, a lot of papers are published at a point in history where more papers are published than ever before. A lot of citations, a lot of research. Very little to show for it in terms of actual application, in terms of actually coming down and impacting people's lives. By the way, much of that basic research dollars spent by non-government is spent by the pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical industry spends an enormous amount on basic research. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Brook show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.