On the wonders of capitalism

In his letter (Mailbag Aug 18) Mr. Brenan pointed out “how quickly free enterprise corporations managed to develop and produce” the Covid vaccines, and implied that the “wondrous successes under capitalism” would not have been possible if the whole program had been managed by the government. 

While we celebrate the entrepreneurs and the competitive force of the “free market”, let us not forget that it is the basic research by scientists and academicians whose salaries are bankrolled by taxpayers and whose grants are issued by government-run agencies that made those advances possible. They are the ones who took the painstaking steps to understand the molecular biology and who developed laboratory technologies that made the mRNA vaccines possible. Private companies merely scale up the technology to an industrial level, and market the products at the highest allowable profits. Even then, they benefit plenty from government subsidies and tax-breaks. Among other examples of how capitalists pick up the fruit of government-funded research include the internet, GPS, and robotics, and many clinical applications in medicine.

To simplify that government is all inertia or that capitalism is the driver of all creations is to ignore the fact that our American success stories has always been the delicate balance of public-private cooperation, with basic research coming from government agencies and funding of industrial development coming from private investors. Beyond this, the continuing role of government is proper regulations and consumer protection. It is when legislators and capitalists are cozy bed-fellows that we all lose.

(Submitted on Aug 18, and published on Aug 25,2021 in the Gazettte Times, Corvallis)