For energy independence, as noted by Jonathan Adler at NRO:
Speaking Monday at Fresno State University in California, Sen. John McCain put forward what may be the most promising and important energy-policy proposal of the campaign: a $300 million prize for the development of advanced battery technology. “In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure,” he noted. Yet rather than have Washington pick winners and losers from within the energy industry, McCain suggested that the government should reward innovation and actual achievement. “From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.”
As outlined by McCain, the prize would be paid the first innovator to develop a battery technology that “leapfrogs” existing electric car and plug-in hybrid technology, in terms of size, capacity, power, and cost. The aim is a battery technology that capable of powering motor vehicles at 30 percent of current costs. This would be a significant technical breakthrough, greatly enhancing the ability of battery-powered vehicles to compete in the marketplace.
Government-sponsored prizes for innovation are based upon the same principle as the patent system: Encourage innovation by rewarding inventors and entrepreneurs with the promise of super-competitive returns. A patent provides such a reward by giving the innovator a temporary monopoly for his invention. A prize goes one step further by placing a bounty on a particular type of innovation, increasing incentives for potential investors.
$300 million is a good deal of money, and I wish now that I’d bothered to study engineering and that sort of stuff like my Dad wanted me to (well, he never said, study engineering, but I got the distinct impression that the man who worked on the space program and the Stealth fighter wanted very much for one of his children to follow in his footsteps). Be that as it may, it is a great incentive and rather than having some bureaucrat – under pressure from whomever donated the most – select which research programs to subsidize, just throw the prize out there and left people self-select themselves for the effort, and the reward (’cause it wouldn’t just be that $300 million – there would also be the patent rights, and the bonanza of cash for that). This is the sort of real change McCain offers as opposed to Obama’s false change, which is really just warmed-over Carterism.
Now, any techno-geeks out there in the audience have any ideas on how to leapfrog to this new technology?
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