The economic role of science

This will be somewhat more philosophical than most posts, and should start with a couple explicit statements of the premises from which I approach this subject. The first is that I was educated in the Enlightment tradition that includes Thomas Payne, and which generally holds that the legitimate functions of government are the protection of life, liberty and property. This is the theory from which Adam Smith worked in defining The Wealth of Nations, and one which F. A. Hayek argues we must adhere to if we want to avoid the Road to Serfdom.

So, how then do I justify my own life as a scientist, especially one who expects to depend on the largess of the state? The answer is that I believe the only way for the life, liberty and property to be defended is for externalities, positive and negative, to be properly adjudicated, and this must be the function of the state. While I'm generally a fan of the Cato Institute, I disagree with them on this point.

Science is often presented as a "positive externality", providing benefits such as better chemistry for batteries and medicines, the underlying physics for things like GPS, and very fundamental things like thermodynamics and electromagnetics. However, I would argue that the most important role of science is the identification of externalities. The most obvious example involves the study of anthropogenic climate change, which identified that the use of fossil fuels has costs far beyond the local pollution caused by their combustion. Every time there is a product recall, warning from the Centers for Disease Control, or a new regulation to protect a threatened species or community, science is involved. A society in which new products and processes are introduced needs a group of highly trained people to sort out who's actually effected by them. Whether this is accomplished through legislation or lawsuits, scientists are involved.

Beyond regulation and more progressive benefits, science, particularly government funded science, has a strong role to play in education. Knowledge is still power, and the protection of liberty requires that power be distributed broadly. This plays out in two major forms: (1) the training of young scientists to do useful things and (2) providing the public with information that enables them to make well informed decisions in their private lives and at the polls. The first is the reason I coach a FIRST Lego League team. The second is the reason I have this blog and advocate Pie Making Capacity in Nation (PMCIN, pronounced "pumpkin") as an economic metric.

I am in science and happy to do government science because it is essential to the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of a PMCIN=1 society. Science teaches us what we need to know to advance as a society without killing ourselves in the process. Oh, and there's the whole security enabled by better defense technologies angle, but that's more of an engineering than scientific problem.