Peter Young

“MITI, far from being a uniquely brilliant leader of government/industrial partnership, has been wrong so often that the Japanese themselves will concede that much of their growth derives from industry's rejection of MITI’s guidance. MITI, incredibly, opposed the development of the very areas where Japan has been successful: cars, electronics and cameras. MITI has, moreover, poured vast funds into desperately wasteful projects. Thanks to MITI, Japan has a huge overcapacity in steel - no less than three times the national requirement. This, probably the most expensive mistake Japan ever made in peacetime, was a mistake of genius, because Japan has no natural resources: it has to import everything; the iron ore, the coal, the gas, the limestone and the oil to make its unwanted steel. Undaunted, MITI then invested in giant, loss-making (£400 million losses by 1992) 5th generation supercomputers at the precise moment that the market opened for the small personal computer; and MITI' s attempts at dominating the world's pharmaceutical and telecommunications industries have each failed. Nor is this just anecdote. In a meticulous study of MITI’s interventions into the Japanese economy between 1955 and 1990, Richard Beason of Alberta University and David Weinterin of Harvard showed that, across the 13 major sectors of the economy, surveying hundreds of different companies, Japan's bureaucrats almost invariably picked and supported the losers.”
― 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

“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

“The hobby scientists flourished under laissez faire, but laissez-faire Britain came to an end in 1914. Before 1914 the Government sequestered less than 10 per cent of the nation's wealth in taxes, but between 1918 and 1939 the Government increased this to about 25 per cent of GNP, and since 1945 the Government has spent between 40-50 per cent GNP. Because of the attrition of inherited wealth and of private means, the hobby scientist is now practically extinct.”
― Terence Kealey, The Economic Laws of Scientific Research