Five Dollar Gas

> No one can say for sure which technologies will solve the energy
> problem. We can all make the list of candidates topped, ultimately,
> by SSP.
> I think it is safe to say that the free markets and enterprise will
> get us there -- not government or bureaucracies or lots of
> regulation.
> Think of NASA, our main impediment (with congress) to development of
> commercial space. Most space launches are now made with Russian
> engines. Our space shuttle is as close to a joke as it can get. It
> is like you only had an eighteen wheeler for all your transportation
> needs -- and left the trailer at your destination each trip. The
> Russians have become more free and enterprising -- we have become

Soyuz was developed while the Soviet Union still existed. How much new
technology has the Russian free market produced?

There are other examples of space programs available for comparison.
How many countries have reasonably successful government-funded space
programs? Now how many countries have successful private space
programs?

> more socialistic. The NASA bureaucracy is alive and well -- our
> space program misdirected and without goals.
> For every problem government seems to solve -- they create three
> more of equal or greater magnitude and spend 1.5 times what taxes
> they receive. Govt. is our nemesis not our friend.
> However enticing it is to regulate and interfere with the "evil"
> auto and energy companies -- remember the computer revolution, early
> 1980's.
> Left unencumbered the enterprise system will evolve a better
> solution than govt. can possibly imagine.

Entrepreneurs are very good at making minor improvements to technology
that has been developed by government-funded research. Transistors were
invented at AT&T, which was a government-regulated monopoly. Although
the integrated circuit was invented at private companies, initial
development was motivated and funded by the Apollo and Minuteman
programs. The Internet was developed by the Defense Advanced Research
Project Agency and NSF (and other government agencies and
government-funded universities). Computer commercialization was of
course performed by entrepreneurs, e.g. Jobs and Wozniak, or various PC
cloners. The task of commercialization itself requires innovation, but
in the case of the "computer revolution" there was a huge amount of
work done to get to that point.

Generally, there is no economic motivation for companies to perform
basic research, because the time scale is too long, the uncertainty is
too great, and the profits from successful inventions tend to be spread
over many companies and society as a whole. The economist Joseph
Schumpeter pointed out that free markets are best at efficiently
allocating resources using existing technology, but that new
combinations of resources (i.e. technological innovations) have been
responsible for the majority of the increase in the standard of living.
(Aside: Besides allocating resources efficiently and creating more
efficient uses of those resources, the third main measure of economic
efficiency is the percentage of the workforce that is productively
employed. Keynes explained why free markets are bad at maintaining full
employment.)

That being said, I hope that space-related technology has reached the
point at which entrepreneurs can take over.

Regards,

Phil Putman
Research Assistant Professor
Texas Center for Superconductivity and Advanced Materials
University of Houston
Houston, TX 77204-5002
pputman@...