[pbh101]

The government is not literally just 'us.' It's a contentious idea: "government is just the word for the things we choose to do together" was oft-repeated by Rep. Barney Frank. He was repeating it because not everyone agrees.

I think the primary problem of government funding is waste and the potential for corruption. Waste because the government is more immune to profit motive and thus can throw good money after bad for a long time. Corruption because you need to convince some bureaucrats v. all your customers (or whoever the market needs). The flip side is that, done well, you can get things done that no business could get done on its own.

So, if Tesla/cleantech succeeds, nobody will remember government funding as some sort of attenuation or 'asterisk' on the win: it was getting the industry over a hump, but into self-sustaining success. Win all around. The problem is if the government support ends up propping up business models that have no hope of actually being viable when that support goes away.

If cleantech ends up failing, then the government backing that which couldn't succeed in the free market will be remembered. But it's all a tradeoff: we're not going to be perfect every time and should be prepared to accept some misses if we think bootstrap government funding of promising but currently non-viable products is a worthy allocation of taxpayer money.

EDIT: sibling comment has great additional point about market distortion being a problem too.

[perilunar]

>"government is just the word for the things we choose to do together"

Definitely contentious. A more correct formulation is "government is just the word for the things we are forced to do together"

[repsilat]

Perhaps more even-handed libertarian dig is that it's "the things we force ourselves to do together." In that view it's a solution to market failures around externalities and bad game-theoretic outcomes in collective action/decision-making. Free-riders, the tragedy of the commons, that sort of thing.

[webscaleizfun]

Go live where there is no government, its great to act so infringed upon by the government in the place in which you currently reside, but you do have choices.

Not saying its a rosy picture to live in an area with no publicly owned infrastructure, or any baseline public services like water, sewer, trash, education, courts, etc, but there are places in Latin America which have legal carveouts for a non-governmentally controlled area to exist, without taxes, laws or infrastructure.

Unless you are willing to live & fight for your beliefs, they are absolutely worthless, Martin Luther King & Cesar Chavez didn't accomplish anything sitting at home, they took to the streets and organized like minded people to stand with them and fight for the way things ought to be, regardless what businesses or government tried to do.

[pbh101]

It doesn't necessarily follow from what perilunar or fennecfoxen said that they think 'no government' is the right answer: even if you think the government policy-making wields force, that can just mean the bar for what government should be doing is higher, not that nothing at all ever clears that bar.

Example: one could characterize investment in cleantech as hedge fund-like speculation (other example: US monetary policy), albeit with the dividends paid to the American economy (and some larger proportion to Tesla etc shareholders). I think reasonable people can disagree over whether that is an appopriate action for a government to take (i.e. whether it is in their purview/mandate) separate from whether other issues are (utilities, defense, welfare, etc). A rejection of one is not a rejection of all, and similarly support for one is not support for all.

(Speaking generally: I don't know the specific views of perilunar or fennecfoxen)

[fennecfoxen]

More than contentious, tendentious. It's a choice about how to organize your ideology and world-view, but it's presented as an inarguable fact of existence.

It's also what a small left-leaning majority says to defend themselves and shut up their detractors while they inflict their will on the minority over an issue that's contentious (e.g. our recent health care reform).

And you'll notice that when legislation they don't like appears, you'll hear remarks to the effect of "that is not who we are!" (the standard obviously being relaxed when a government does something the speaker disagrees with).

[webscaleizfun]

Dude, grow up. You do not have to live under govt rule, if you choose to follow an ideology that would rather see government not exist, you can and should fully adhere to your ideology and move to such an area. They do exist in Latin America and other places, and you are not living your ideology or helping it in any way if you won't support it in the most basic of ways.

[fennecfoxen]

>> It's also what a small left-leaning majority says to defend themselves and shut up their detractors

> Dude, grow up

QED. Thanks, dude.