Peter Young

“But the secret of Japan's success is simple - laissez faire. The Emperor may have initiated his capitalist Restoration in 1868, but after 1884 it became State policy to leave industry to its own devices. Having germinated it, the Japanese government understood that capitalism runs best unfettered. This is ironic, since the popular perception abroad has been that Japan has prospered because of MITI’s direction of the economy, whereas the reality is that since 1884 Japan's government has seen itself as the servant of industry, anxious to tax it and its customers as lightly as possible. A 1988 survey by the British Central Statistical Office showed that Japan was one of the three most lightly-taxed industrialised countries, the other two being the USA and Switzerland. Those three countries' governments only sequester 32-35 per cent of GNP compared to the British State's 44 per cent, the West German's 45 per cent, and the French 52 per cent.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research

“Those who argue for more government funding of science, or of anything else, should never forget the cost of government money, namely the taxes that impoverish society to enable government to impose its particular, narrow, harsh vision of a modern university.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research

“The loss of the hobby scientists has been unfortunate because the hobby scientists tended to be spectacularly good. They were good because they tended to do original science. Professional scientists tend to play it safe; they need to succeed, which tempts them into doing experiments that are certain to produce results. Similarly, grant-giving bodies which are accountable to government try only to give money for experiments that are likely to work. But experiments that are likely to work are probably boring – indeed, if they are that predictable, they are barely experiments at all; rather, they represent the development of established science rather than the creation of the new (though science is so unpredictable that even so-called predictable experiments will yield unpredictable results on occasion). But the hobby scientist is unaccountable.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research

“Neither Gladstone nor any other British politician did support science to any significant extent during the nineteenth century – yet that did not prevent Britain from growing into the richest and most industrialised country in the world nor from producing scientists such as Davy, Kelvin, Maxwell, Lyell and Darwin. Curiously, nineteenth century France and Germany, whose governments did fund science expansively, trailed behind.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research