There's an old truth saying that the longer you wait the more expensive and hard things will be to change.
Ironic, since the truth is the reverse.
Wouldn't it have been great if we'd done that? Invested in electric cars, and nuclear? Then we would probably have an efficient electric car today, and knowledge about nuclear power unknown to us. Perhaps we would use thorium reactors? Perhaps something better?
But that's not what would have happened. We'd have built dozens more crappy reactors like the ones at Fukushima. And the resources devoted to electric cars wouldn't have gone to developing the more sophisticated computers and basic research that is making *good* electric cars possible.
The reason we can design such great nuclear reactors and electric cars today is not because of all the research into electric cars and nuclear reactors we've done. It's because we have (or at least *had*) a prosperous economy with good basic research, so we can do *everything* better.
When these things will really work, the profit motive will direct money into them. If you have to push to get money into them, it's strong evidence you're trying to do it wrong. You don't know if solar is right. You don't know if hydrogen is right. You don't know if thorium is right. Central planning will always tend to move resources to less productive uses because the information to make the right decisions simply does not exist without an open market.
I'm in total agreement with you about the population thing though. But I have one more thought about that. How do we make sure that the potential Einsteins/Beethovens are able to reach their full potential? How do we equalize the chance everyone gets when starting out their lives?
We don't want to equalize the chances. If your children get an equal chance regardless of what you do, why bother to do much for them? If you want excellence, you have to try as hard as you can *NOT* to do anything that tends to even things out.
So if you design a new car, and you find a flaw in the design, would it be cheaper to fix it at the design stage, or after you've set up a production line, done all your tooling, trained your staff, ordered all components and started rolling out cars?
I agree with your assertion that a prosperous economy does a world of good for research, but
basic research? Assuming we're talking about the same things here I'd say that's not something done by most companies. Companies does applied research, and they're damn good at it. Basic research is just a money sink to them and something most often done with taxpayers money. Solar is a good example. Now they're beginning to become efficient and many companies are investing in researching it, because of the research done over the last 30 years or so, mainly funded by taxpayers. Does that mean that the research done over the last 30 years have been wasted? Or that they've provided a foundation that companies can build on?
When it comes to the children then. I thought the race was on to find the next Einstein/Beethoven, not to provide a comfortable life for
your children. Perhaps one of the snotty children of that poor family over there have the potential, but don't get the chance to proper education because of their socio-economic status. While we all like to think that our children are geniuses, the likelihood of that being true is slim. So you need a broad search scope, meaning that you'd want to give the largest amount of people possible the chance to test their potential. Not just the ones lucky enough to have good parents.