technology and the state

Posted on: January 18, 2020 at 12:12:07 CT

The Mises Institute recently published an unpublished essay by Murray Rothbard written in the late 1950s on the subject of technology and the state. In it he departed from the whole of conventional wisdom at the time by arguing that the government was not the appropriate institution to trust with our technological future. Research and development is best done by the private sector, he said. All major innovations in world history have come about this way, he wrote, and it is from within the private sector that we should expect the next revolution. From government we can only expect technology that reinforces political priorities, but no real innovations that are both useful for the mass of the consuming public and economically viable.

These days, the paper is not shocking to read at all. Not so in those times. The paper was not published, because there was no one around to publish it. It was an argument that all his colleagues would have rejected outright. In those days, it didn't even seem to have superficial plausibility. Even those who commissioned the piece found themselves squeamish about its contents. When you think about the public consensus that existed for the state in those days, it does indeed strike us as a different world.