Quotation of the Day…

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… is from Samuel Gregg’s brilliant July 2024 paper, “A Free, Prosperous and Secure America”:

Even if a subsidized industry appears to have developed a technology that gives State A military advantages over State B, that does not mean that the government assistance which accompanied this goal was effective or worth the cost from either an economic cost or national security perspective. One must ask whether the breakthrough might have happened regardless of subsidy or protection, and also what might have happened to those industries that did not receive help or benefits. It may well be that the industrial policy actually directed resources away from other companies that may have produced even better technology in more cost-effective ways.

DBx: So true. Yet how many people who scream “national security!” to justify protectionism ever bother to consider such possibilities? In my experience, almost none.