That's a straw man. The problem is tons of research and development won't happen without the state, but the main avenue the state funds development (as opposed to research) is the military.
There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice.
We don't have to stop military research, but we should bring up the Arpa-E and other such things to bring balance to the situation.
There are many possible futures, and the world is highly non-ergodic, so there is a real cost here to biasing the development of technology in this matter. "Opportunity cost" doesn't do the concept justice.
We don't have to stop military research, but we should bring up the Arpa-E and other such things to bring balance to the situation.