Maggie's Farm

I'm not sure I entirely agree with the premise of the article. I guess you could argue that there has been a lot of incremental improvement of old things, but that incremental improvement in computers, for example, is something I don't take for granted and I was a computer professional when I was working. Since I graduated from college, the computing power that used to take up an entire room is the size of a pad of paper. There are also a lot of advances in lasers, cloaking, medicine, etc. We've made huge strides in every field.

But I don't totally discount the article's premise. The advances we've made have been made in spite of the over-regulation, the inefficient use of resources, the decaying education system, and the regressions in political and social culture. All of that is attributable to our reliance on government which has increased exponentially since the '60s. When I was growing up, 'subsidy' was a dirty word and politicians were sure to explain that their program did not contain subsidies (even they they probably did). Now, subsidies are a feature of policies that are proudly proclaimed. This change has required the redirection of resources from productive endeavors to unproductive ones (for example, increased use of layers and lobbyists and defensive practices). Consider how long it took to develop the Jeep in WWII or the U2 afterwards. The groundbreaking SR71 was (basically) invented and put in service in less time than it takes us now to agree on the funding for the next fighter.

This is all the 'fault' of government which is to say our fault. As good as things are, they are not nearly as good as they ought to be.