1) I’m tired as hell of hearing people invoke Reagan, Bush, or the Republicans every time a fiscal conservative criticizes the size/reach of the government. The GOP is a party that talks the talk but very rarely walks the walk.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that the Blue Oregon folks usually can’t (won’t?) distinguish between “Republican” and other sorts of conservatives. So when they pronounce that Bush was a conservative “no matter how vociferously conservatives seek to deny him,” it’s mainly a reflection of the fact that they either cannot or refuse to conceive of any sort of conservative thought that isn’t part of the of the fiscally liberal/socially conservative straw man they’ve constructed.

2) Speaking broadly, the “progressives” that Blue Oregon caters to do not adhere to a philosophy of “equality of opportunity.” They’re more concerned with “equality of outcome”, which almost invariably necessitates massive government intervention to make sure no one group gets ahead of anyone else.

First of all, I don’t think anyone wants to argue that Bush was really a “fiscal conservative, no matter how much he tries to deny it.” The truth is, you’re right, the GOP is hardly “fiscally conservative,” although they claim otherwise when it suits them politically. The point of people like Blue Oregon, I think, is to use Reagan, the Bushes, and Clinton as examples of how the alignments of the parties has been changing since the 1960s; generally speaking, Democrats are actively establishing – and even want to achieve – a better track record in terms of actually being fiscally conservative. I mean, yeah, the stimulus probably shows they could do this much better, but their point basically still stands: in the last 30 years, only a Democratic administration has achieved a balanced budget. More importantly, a huge number of people in the left wing base (myself included) are not the Welfare Statist left of the Great Society. We want the deficit ended, unnecessary spending cut, the overburdening income tax repealed, and hopefully as soon as possible.

Second, I can’t speak for Blue Oregon, but as a “progressive,” I can say that I myself do not expect “equality of outcome,” by any means. Such a notion is absurd, and reasonable “progressives” do well to reject it. I do think, however, that market failures like externalities, monopolies, and asymmetry of information will need be corrected if we are expected to have “equality of opportunity,” and to this end, the various spheres that both create and shape the economic – political, social, spiritual and artistic – must be expected to play a role. Focusing solely on the capabilities of the economic sphere of the “free” “market” to solve our problems is, I believe, too limited an approach. (Also, I think, and I hope you agree, that currently there is in practice no such thing as a true “free market”). That’s of course not to say that free market strategies should not be employed at all, as many idiotic “progressives” contend, at their fault.

Attributing “the internet” to “the government” is a dicey proposition, given that ARPANET was based on technologies developed by researchers from a number of different universities nationwide and implemented on computer hardware developed by private firms like DEC and IBM.

That “innovation emerges organically” is unquestionably true, and government funding is often very useful for private entrepreneurs who might not otherwise have the resources to work on projects that might or might not pay off. But acknowledging that government money can be crucial is far different from asserting that it’s a “myth” that the private sector is where the best and fastest innovation is happening.

Looking around at what’s here on my desk or thinking about what I have in my room at home, I can think of exactly zero things that I can say are the direct product of government work (I’m not saying there is nothing, just that I can’t think of any). By contrast, nearly everything I see can be directly attributed to a private enterprise trying to make money (or, in the case of free open-source software, a group of individuals collectively working on projects with no profit motive at all).

According to this, the microwave oven was originally patented by Raytheon after a self-taught engineer working for that company accidentally discovered that you could cook stuff with microwave energy.

The Jeep was also developed by a private firm, Willys-Overland based on a prototype by a different firm, though in that case, it was because the government was looking for someone to build a “light truck”.

The Jeep example, however, reminds me that the original VW Bug (KdW-Wagen, or something) was, in fact, developed by Ferdinand Porsche for use in the Nazi government’s “Strength through Joy” program whereby Germans could save up vouchers taken from their paychecks and get a car after enough had been saved. Most of the money was just taken by the government for rearmament and, if I’m not mistaken, no KdF-Wagens were ever delivered to anyone in Germany for civilian use.

And some really, really dank marijuana. But that’s beside the point, which is more specific in this case: that government does in fact fund, create, or regulate into existence an environment which inspires innovation in various ways that private market might not always be able to, due to market failures, the inaccessibility of capital to new entrepreneurs, and maybe some other various reasons – as Vincent pointed out. Furthermore, we must never forget that the government creates markets by enforcing property rights and contracts – which we all of course know, if we’re having this conversation – so the government clearly has a role in making sure they carry out that very charge as effectively as possible, which might in some cases mean increasing regulations.

Anyway, I’m not seeking to attribute the internet 100% to the government, by any means. I’m actually saying I think what you are, but in different terms, which is that just as nothing can be attributed 100% to the government, it’s a similarly dicey proposition to attribute it 100% elsewhere. I think that private entities are in fact best and most efficient at creating innovation in a wide *number* of areas, but not particularly as well suited to accomplishing other things that we might value as a society. Saying this does not contend that it’s a “myth” private markets create innovation, nor does it acknowledge it’s a “myth” that innovation sometimes comes from government. I generally think neither proposition is really safe.

I don’t really want to get into the specifics of every kind of market failure, just because that’s a whole life’s work for some people. I will admit that it’s impossible for regulators or anyone else to know everything about the “best” choice, but I don’t agree that even the worst regulators are selected “arbitrarily,” at least as long as I continue to give lip service to the value of democracy. I will admit that the preference for democracy and this particular structure of it is indeed somewhat arbitrary, but nonetheless reasonable.

And as for “progressive”: I put that in quotes in my original post for a reason. I don’t really understand the moniker either. I’m progressive, of course, and I’m also liberal. I’m also libertarian, and then somewhat socialist. And environmentalist, and also capitalist. I don’t know. I just used “progressive” in this case because that’s whatever someone else used. Of course, boiling my actual political views down to a clear label I can share with a large group of people is difficult, as it is for us all.

I gotta go… this is an interesting discussion, as always, though.

Matt – seeing contract and property rights as the purview of government is useful, but not necessary for constructing a system which has both. And, if you pay attention long enough, you’ll stop trusting the value of democracy*.

The thing is, and this is where I think a lot of modern left and right folks get off track, that regulatory agencies are just as subject to malformed incentives and informational problems as any market. Perhaps more so, given that power is more concentrated and there are fewer actors to deal with. Actually, the whole TARP business is a great example of regulatory capture — the guys at Treasury and the Fed need expert advice about what to do, but all of the experts directly benefit from some of the possible actions the Fed could take…obvious incentive problem.

The problem I have with both the left and right wings is pretty simple: they are very eager to point out any potential flaws, real or imagined, in consensual transactions between private parties; but, at the same time, completely ignore the pitfalls of regulatory or government agencies. It’s like they think voting is some kind of magic panacea, and that people get into politics or government for reasons wholly different than why people do anything else: money, power, and sex.

* Voting theory is a very interesting area of research, and even a cursory reading will make you wonder if the outcomes of the kinds of elections we have in the US really measure anything useful at all…let alone the aggregate preferences of 300 million people.

Everything is connected. At the very least, the private entity will have some employee that was educated in the public schools or have received in the past some government assistance that allowed it to operate in some context

I think you’re stretching your argument to the breaking point, here. By this reasoning, we should be thanking the ancient Greeks, the Roman Catholic church, the golden age of Arabic civilization, etc. for the iPod because at some point down the line a few centuries ago, some bloke passed on knowledge to someone else who passed it on to someone else, etc. until it all got handed down to Steve Jobs who made use of all that aggregate knowledge to come up with a good way to market a digital music player.

Of course that’s nonsense. Jobs is an inventive guy and he and Woz and the rest of hi cohorts have come up with a lot of smart ideas over the years. The government had nothing to do with any of them. I think it’s totally disingenuous to argue that, since someone happened to go to a public school, the government therefore somehow deserves a share of the credit for their life’s work. It’s a creepily collectivist notion, actually.

And in any case, I didn’t say “in a vaccuum.” I said “independent of government interference.” There’s an important and not-so-subtle distinction there.