fatvegan

One of the many bones I have with my business and government lecturer is his crazy but popular views on monopolies and research investment. He, and others, reckon that you need to have monopoly profits lying around to fund research in future innovations. Apparently our glorious capital market fails when it comes to anticipating the benefits of this sort of investment, so we need companies with enough money that they don't have to worry about spending passing a cost-benefit test. I find this line of reasoning a little disturbing. Instead of giving money to government to invest in research that will benefit everyone and can be used by everyone, we should give it to monopolists to spend on research that may or may not have any value. If the government can't sell the case for research to taxpayers and entrepreneurs can't sell the case for research to investors, then why do all these pro-market think this research should be done at all.

I'm all for exploratory research with doubtful outcomes, but why take surplus from consumers and give it to monopolists to help them monopolise even more of the intellectual property market. Just give it to the government who has no real incentive to do anything but invest money well. And by that I mean, good for humanity, which is the ultimate goal of all research and innovation anyway.

If the pro-market people acknowledge that the market here is broken, why do they think that breaking their own market efficiency rules will help the situation? Particulary since a profit-maximising monopolist is, by definition, someone who has already betrayed the public good for higher profits.