Comment by Someone
> I can think of more than a few industry segments (aerospace, biotech, etc.) that likely wouldn’t exist or be nearly as lucrative as they currently are without the extensive government intervention that helped build them.
Likely, yes, but even if they are, it’s impossible to say whether that’s a net win for society. Possibly, if the government hadn’t subsidized them, but instead had had lower taxation, other industry segments would have blossomed, and gotten better benefits for society.
As an example, US government support for the Internet may have led to larger automation, making labor relatively more expensive, and because of that decreasing the size of the middle class. Opinions will differ on whether that’s a net positive.
I think there’s too many layers of counterfactuals here: much of the government’s economic intervention stems from a (perceived) need that transcends ordinary economic concerns. Think wars, epidemics, famines, etc.
In other words, I think we’d need to presume the absence of those concerns to intelligibly consider the absence of taxation-funded interventions. And that’s more of a minarchst fever dream than a thing that could actually happen.