The New York Times had an article citing dozens of places across the nation that are pursuing biotechnology jobs with millions upon millions of dollars of public subsidies and investments.

The appeal of the biotech industry is clear: high-paying jobs of the future, seemingly qualitatively different than the middling skill jobs that are easily outsourced.  And the dream is supremely enticing: to become the Silicon Valley of biotechnology.

Yet most of the examples cited by the article are head-scratchers. They’re local civic leaders attempting to build an industry cluster from the ground up.  How can they possibly compete against the sharp competition with deeper advantages like incumbent biotechnology companies and research institutions connected to universities?

Such examples of politically-directed economic policy reinforces the simple “can’t-beat-the-market” philosophy of the Hawks in the state senate who insist again and again that the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking industry winners and losers. 

But politics and economics are never completely segregated.  And the Hawks themselves often favored incentives, if not for specific industries, at least for their normative judgments – higher wage jobs, or small business-owners.

The question really boils down to a farm-team versus free agent question.  Does one invest in human and capital infrastructure and grow jobs?  Or does one spend those dollars luring established companies to relocate?  In the former, the market has a larger role in determining which companies will populate the state.  In the latter, the political process looms larger.