>Why would a government bureaucracy, with relatively
>limiltless resources and no bottom-line pressures, be
>less likely than private business at making "risky
>long term bets"? Would private business have funded
>the space program?
Sure didn't fund the early days of computers and the internet - too risky, you know.
Or rather too uncertain. As any Keynesian knows, statistically quantifiable risk is way different from radical uncertainty. Business likes risk, but it's not crazy over uncertainty; the big bets are for the public sector - computers in 1955, the net in 1975, or basic biomedical research anytime in the last few decades. Drug companies like making new variants on old drugs, not taking "risky [or deeply uncertain] long-term bets."
Oh, and they like high prices not only to fund their R&D, but to support their vast marketing operations - advertising (to docs and to the public), sales forces, "conferences" in places like Aruba...
Doug