Obama has criticized Detroit for failing to innovate, saying U.S. automakers should make hybrid vehicles as good as Japanese automakers do. But I suspect that governmental control is not the way to spur innovation. Think about it. Although American health care is the most expensive in the world and has among the least government interference, it is also the world's most innovative with leading treatment techniques and medicines.
If government had run the computer business the past 50 years, would we have desktop computers like the one I'm using to write this column? I doubt it. Don't even think about laptops or netbooks. The room-size computers that government and industry used in the 1950s to crunch their data worked just fine. Why would individuals need a computer? To store recipes? To send letters and messages to friends and family? Get real! That's what the post office and Western Union are for!
And what about the music industry? Would a government monopoly have invented iTunes? Would it even have developed the compact disc? Seems unlikely; LPs — or even 78s — served the public well enough and kept the musicians and producers happy. Digital music would seem like a waste of computing power and binary coding to most government bureaucrats. And would a government-controlled music industry have given us hip-hop or the Beatles or Elvis? Doesn't seem likely. Government disdains rebelliousness.
An infusion of federal money into U.S. automakers might be justified under today's unusual circumstances, but innovation, or the lack of it, is not a good rationale for federal management of industry.
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