Should the government be as involved in the IT industry as it currently is in South Korea The South Korean government almost dictates policy to the ICT sector in the country. With a combination of protectionist regulations, incentives, research grant monies, and loan programs it promotes the technologies that it wants to see developed. Some good examples of this are WiBro, RFID, and anything labeled Ubiquitous. Should it be doing this or should it let the free market decide what direction technology grows
Yes:
The market is a blind and dumb force and it cannot figure out what is best for it, much less what is best for everyone in the country. The only entity with the correct vantage point to guide technology development is the government. Technology is magic made real; it is a powerful force for change and improvement of people's lives. This is both by giving them the latest gadgets to ease their daily life and by providing jobs making the latest gadgets. Such a powerful force should be controlled and directed by those who know best. Additionally, there are many great small companies that have good ideas and just need a little bit of a boost to get their ideas off of paper and into reality. There are several tragedies in the history of invention, people whose ideas were amazing and yet never received the resources they needed to get them off the planning page and into the air. The government is in the position to help companies and perhaps even individuals like this, and it should. In conclusion, only the kind hand of government can effectively lead the country's companies in the technological direction that they should go.
No:
The South Korean government should take a step back and let the market move where it needs to go. The market may not be guided by any overreaching plan, but is guided by a more basic idea profitability. Business profitability is the most basic of needs for any economy, and allowing businesses to find their own profitable niche is the best possible way to help them and the economy as a whole. The great thing about the free market is that it works, and it works surprisingly well. If some company is not profitable, and does not have a solid business idea, the free market will eat them up and spit them out. A company that receives charity from government research grants is actually harmed, because they put off questions of profitability indefinitely. Additionally, it has been said that necessity is the mother of invention. This means that in times of great need the great ideas come to some people. If this is true, then necessity must be engineered as often as possible in a market where innovation is needed. And if there's a great creator of necessity, it's the free market. If a government interferes with this process of self-selection in the business environment, they poison the entire private sector by supporting sub-par businesses. These sub-par businesses in turn develop sub-par talent, which remains in the sector and possibly goes on to other jobs, where they also perform poorly. In just the same way that a bird pushes it's young out of the nest to make them learn how to fly, so too should a government treat the companies in its jurisdiction firmly. In economics more so than any other discipline, survival of the fittest is the one and only ideal. In conclusion, only by non-interference can the government truly let the market innovate and experiment and by mere happenstance find the best road to travel on the way to technological prowess.
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