There is a deplorable tendency for industrial policy and assistnce to favour the status quo rather than to encourage the new and original. The result is that governemt industrail plolicy has a built in tendency to respond to the powerful lobbiers and interests in place rather than assist the as yet weak and struggling newcomers and original innovators who are inevitably unpopular and/or constitute a threat to those already dominating the markets with their (perhaps dated or inappropriate) products and viewis.
The irony is that those who might best benifit a dynamic and developing society probably have little time to induldge in complicated, bureaucratic, proceedures, lobbying, and form filling to obtain the few crumbs remaining after the table has been pillaged by long established business, labour, regional, and sectorial lobbies.
Consequently, an intelligent government abstains from enthusiatically implementing industrial policies as they inevitably reflect the present distribution of economic and political power steming from the application of yesterday's and today's technologies and industrail practices rather than those that disrupt the present interests and tha the future needs to adopt. Government industrial policies, freed from the reality of market forces, tend to react to the views of established ieconomic, political, and ndustrial actors. In so doing they continue to perpetuate the misapplicatin of economic resources to outmoded but powierful lobbies and influential producers of products and services. The innovator and the creator of new products and services generally has little influence and say in their elaboration and implementation. And, too often governments favor large burecratic suppliers in their procurement and payment practices.
Governments , at best can try to remove obstacles and unnecessary hurdles to innovation and the introduction of new prducts and services. Government industrial policies must permit declining industriest to decline gracefully rather than desperately attempt to surpport their continued activity. A declining industry can usefully permit resources to be liberated and applied to more efficient and productive economic activity, perhaps in another region. Unfortunately, all too often govenment induatrial policies respond to political pressures rather than the underlying economic facts that have ultiately to be faced if progress is to be made. Fighting the inevitable is too often the halmark of government industrial actions, it is seldom that of enlightened leader and innovator.
