Jamie Whyte provides another blockbuster:
Once you think of a nation as a company, other mistakes follow quite
naturally. You think of international trade as a competition. You think
that we should aim to export more than we import, as if exports were
the country’s revenues and imports its costs. And you make the biggest
mistake of all. You try to plan the economy. You think that the
Government, like managers of a company, should decide how to allocate
the nation’s resources.
This misconception persists not only among academics, for most
of whom socialism is second nature, but even on the political Right. In
a leading article last week, The Daily Telegraph agreed with
Sir Richard. After lamenting successive governments’ failure to produce
more science graduates, it claimed that “with China and India now
churning out science graduates on an industrial scale, such neglect is
potentially disastrous”.
I wonder if the Telegraph also believes that the
Government should direct more of the nation’s resources into underwear
manufacturing. After all, China is churning out underwear on an
industrial scale. If we are to compete with it and avert a national
disaster the Government must surely see to it that Britain recovers its
underwear competitiveness.
There is no more need to compete with China in the production
of scientists than in the production of underwear or anything else. If
China enjoys a comparative advantage in the production of scientists,
then we should buy our scientists from China. And it can buy its PR
consultants and video directors from us. In a global economy, the
nationality of scientists matters less than ever.
If there were a shortage of British scientists, then their
price — that is, their pay — would increase. Students who seek high
incomes, of which there is never a shortage, would then be inclined to
switch from literature to science. In a free labour market, where
salaries vary with the supply of and demand for labour, skills
shortages are soon eliminated. Sir Richard, the Telegraph and
the Government can rest easy. Only when the planning urge overcomes our
leaders do we risk persistent shortages or surpluses.
The insistence that "UK PLC" should train more scientists is even more absurd when you think of the justification given for the public funding of such training and research in the first place. That they are in fact a public good, that everyone benefits from the production of new ideas and knowledge, and that the use of such by one person doesn’t stop their use by another.
So why should we care whether that’s being produced in India, China or here? We can still benefit from it.
If we can’t for some reason, then the case for subsidizing research also goes away, for it isn’t then a public good is it?
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