Government's Role in Innovation

A website called SFGate ran a story recently on innovation:  The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation by James Temple (Sunday, March 10, 2013). 

The article by Mr. Temple included this quote:
"None of this argues for government keeping its nose out of the business of innovation, it makes the case for it taking a leading role - for leveraging its unique position to address these obvious market failures. Only governments had the long view and available cash to fund things like supercolliders, deep space programs and - oh yeah - the development of the Internet."

As I mentioned in an earlier post [1], the best scientific innovation from the government is done by the U.S. military.  Generally speaking, the U.S. government should stay out of game of funding innovation for economic growth because the tendency is to provide pork-barrel funding.  Give the U.S. military adequate funding and leave it alone with regard to innovation and it will create what it needs and the result is technology with civilian uses that really drive economic growth, like computers and the internet.

Robert

References:
[1]  Military Research Drives Economic Growth  Sunday, May 13, 2012