The Top Prophecy of the Week

In the Hot Seat: The Bureaucratic Management of Economics and Society [Gilder's Daily Prophecy] May 9, 2020 [UNSUBSCRIBE]( | [ARCHIVES]( George Gilder: “This market story will dwarf 5G…” [Click to play](If you’re ready to bank on 5G stocks to take off when America reopens for business… You may be in for a big surprise, according to “America’s #1 Futurist,” George Gilder. [In this brand-new video presentation… he explains why.]( The bottom line is that 5G could indeed enjoy a “second gold rush,” as plenty of pundits are saying. But even better, says George, is something nobody’s talking about. He calls it “15G” — [be among the first to get the details, at this link.]( In the Hot Seat: The Bureaucratic Management of Economics and Society [George Gilder]Dear Daily Prophecy Reader, Is the Wall Street Journal going socialist and covidious? Surely not. But its op-ed on May 2 by Christopher Mims, which I eagerly picked up on the assumption that it somehow reflected the glory of tech writer prodigy Forrest Mims, repeats all the long-debunked clichés about the supposed dependence of technology on government. “From the invention of the internet (thanks, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency!) [I thought it was Al Gore] to the sequencing of the human genome (thanks, National Institutes of Health!) [thanks more to Craig Venter and Celera Genomics!], markets and the profit-making companies that inhabit them simply aren’t suited to generating the shared public goods that accrue from many kinds of research. That’s fine, adds Dr. [Jonathan] Gruber [famous for Obamacare], because like roads, fire departments and a standing army, R&D should be one of the necessary recipients of government funding.” This hallowed but hollow argument for government dominance works by tracing the source of any technology back into the 1950s and 1960s. Following World War II and into the Korean war, nearly all US technology came from what Dwight Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” Shrouded in secrecy, the war research effort engulfed the economy and most scientists enlisted for the duration. For the subsequent decades, much governmental domination of science continued by inertia. So, whether the internet, or microchips, or fiber optics, or human genome sequencing or even the World Wide Web, socialists, and political analysts have managed to find a government pedigree or thread of funding. They use this evidence to justify government domination of science, which means political manipulation of science. Effectively today it means that all science must submit to politicized pseudo-science priorities such as climate change, “sustainability,” green energy, and virus lockdowns. However, as much as data can be probative, this theory has been tested and disproven. Good News from the Private Sector In Sources of Economic Growth (2003), the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published some 248 pages of tables, figures and data in a regression analysis of the issue. As British scientist and scholar Terence Kealey has explained in The Economic Laws of Scientific Research and his mal-titled-must-read Sex, Science, and Profits, the OECD found “a significant effect of R&D on the growth process.” However, to the OECD’s shock and considerable alarm, they discovered that all the positive impact came from private sector research and development. Public sector R&D produces “negative results” and “taken at face value… suggests publicly performed R&D crowds out resources that could be alternatively [and more productively] used by the private sector.” As Kealey summed up the findings, citing replication by several other studies: “The OECD concluded… that it is business, not public, R&D that drives economic growth, and that the public funding of research and development displaces its business funding… and actually damages economic growth.” Liberal Media Attempt To Take Down Trump? [Enable_Images_Please](Please be warned… This [special coronavirus presentation](may shock and disturb you. It contains underground research that blows the lid off a liberal media plot to take down President Trump before the November elections. Once it hits the mainstream, [this presentation]( is bound to shake our nation to its core. Because of the controversial nature of this video, it likely won’t be online for long. So please take advantage of your opportunity to see it right away. [Click here to see the special presentation now.]( The Truth About the United States Security and Defense As Kealey observed about the internet, “Ironically government helped delay the development of the net and web. The market — in the shape of customers in the financial, oil and automotive industries — was pushing hard for the new IT technologies [“distributed computing”], but AT&T [et al] were able to resist [them]” in the name of legislation giving the telco’s a last mile monopoly. While microchips were dominated by defense markets, with their requirements of secrecy and bureaucracy, the industry languished in a few major companies led by IBM and Bell Labs. It was not until the eruption of the personal computer and software industries that chips became the foundation of the global economy. Trenchantly making the argument, nuclear physicist Edward Teller compared the contributions to US security of the nuclear industry — long draped in government guidance and secrecy — with the contributions of the computer industry open to the world. The computer industry has advanced thousands of times faster than the nuclear industry and US security is largely based on it. From Desert Storm to anti-missiles, US defense is devoid of nuclear technology but replete with computer and microchip advances. Socialism and secrecy do not outperform freedom, even in the military realm, even in otherwise capitalist countries. The Manhattan Project was a brilliant exception, but it succeeded chiefly because of wartime suspension of the normal immigration and security rules. Without immigrants from Europe, mostly Jews, many of them Communists or Communist sympathizers, the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb, and intercontinental missiles could not have been created in the US. The key to the success of this project was Robert Oppenheimer’s rejection of General Leslie Groves advice that the venture should proceed in uncommunicating modules with no one knowing what others were doing. The secret and essentially socialized US nuclear and missile industries bogged down in bureaucracy and could not even keep pace with the Soviet Union. In the 1950s, the Soviets launched Sputnik, a world-leading submarine fleet, and intercontinental missiles, while the US fell pathetically behind. Today, if we continue our stress on secrecy and security and ban immigration from Asia, we will find ourselves similarly falling behind China. It is already happening. In the competition with the Soviets, it was chiefly the free and open computer and microchip industries that allowed MIRVing (with multiple independent reentry vehicles) and miniaturization of warheads for lower powered rockets. It was the free and open electronics industry that gave ultimate superiority to the US and enabled victory in the cold war. The pullulating rivalry of technological enterprise, inimitable by any truly totalitarian state no matter how many “secrets” it steals, is the best guarantor of American safety and security in the face of the unique perils of the new century. Today’s Prophecy Today, above all, we need to rely on private sector research and development. The rise of new Luddites in politics epitomized by the advocates of “sustainability” and the “Green New Deal” has rendered governments sclerotic with environmental rules, medical restrictions, and safety requirements. All of these regulations tend to be based on the so-called “cautionary principle,” which essentially paralyzes with mazes of rules any new technology with a possible peril. Dominated by worst case analysis, this principle enables leftist lawyers to stop almost any project they don’t like from genetically modified crops to fracking for natural gas. Even under President Trump, the government remains chiefly in the business of halting progress not promoting it. Dr. Anthony Fauci, for all his acclaimed brilliance, confessed that the reason for shutting down and locking-in the economy and society was not the proven effects of COVID-19 but the possible “worst case” impact. As a doctor, above all, he does not want the patient to die. Any extreme measure is justifiable. But prescriptions tenable for individual patients are outrageously inappropriate for entire societies. Human beings have evolved for millions of years with viruses and bacteria. It they could wipe us out, there would not be eight billion of us around. If enterprise were governed by worst case possibilities, the Wright brothers’ plane could have never taken off, let alone an industrial or biotech revolution. Only private sector businesses go broke if they cannot launch new products. Only private sector businesses have to defend themselves from rivals by maintaining research superiority. Only private sector ventures have sufficiently specific goals that allow them to focus like a Manhattan project during the war. Where government has specific goals, as in defense, it should guide and finance research and development programs. But no one should imagine that government is somehow the preferred vessel of human progress. The egregious blunder of the current lockdown illustrates the crippling flaws of bureaucratic management of economics and society. Regards, [George Gilder] George Gilder Editor, Gilder's Daily Prophecy Publisher’s Note: Recently Donald Trump quietly signed a bill — H.R. 2881. It’s a groundbreaking new law that could save the internet. It could also help make you exceedingly rich once America reopens for business. But not in the way that the title of this new law — the “Secure 5G and Beyond Act” — might lead you to believe. See, most investors are focused on the “5G” part. But it’s the “beyond” that could help you make an absolute fortune… with an even better, bigger opportunity — as much as 3x bigger — that George is calling “15G.” [Click here to learn more about this opportunity.]( No more banks. No more accountants. No more Wall Street? [Enable_Images_Please](This new type of Internet could change everything in the coming years… But your chance to profit from it could start in the coming days! [Click here for full details.]( [Gilder Press] To end your Gilder's Daily Prophecy e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Gilder's Daily Prophecy, [click here to unsubscribe](. If you are having trouble receiving your Gilder's Daily Prophecy subscription, you can ensure its arrival in your mailbox by [whitelisting Gilder's Daily Prophecy.]( Gilder's Daily Prophecy is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. Please read [our Privacy Statement.]( Gilder Press, a division of Laissez Faire Books, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. Nothing in this e-mail should be considered personalized financial advice. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. No communication by our employees to you should be deemed as personalized financial advice. We expressly forbid our writers from having a financial interest in any security recommended to our readers. All of our employees and agents must wait 24 hours after online publication or 72 hours after the mailing of a printed-only publication prior to following an initial recommendation. Any investments recommended in this letter should be made only after consulting with your investment advisor and only after reviewing the prospectus or financial statements of the company. © 2020 Gilder Press, a division of Laissez Faire Books, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. This newsletter may only be used pursuant to the subscription agreement and any reproduction, copying, or redistribution (electronic or otherwise, including on the world wide web), in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited without the express written permission of Gilder Press, a division of Laissez Faire Books, LLC. EMAIL REFERENCE ID: 401GDPED01