Abstract:  Instead of weapons, governments could spend money on developing useful products that people need and use. That could increase tax revenues and provide employment. It would reduce the deficit and increase export earnings for the nation and update the technical base. A government could provide tech and devices for its citizens, rather than leaving them to find solutions from private companies. A lot of traditional products would become more valuable if enriched with software. 

Over breakfast, this morning, my wife and I were discussing the news story that Apple had become the most profitable company on the planet.  Sipping her coffee, my wife had this thought: if the UK government scrapped the Trident nuclear missile replacement programme and instead spent a fraction of that money on developing a superior iPhone competitor, then the profits arising could pay for the nation’s entire education budget and the National Health Service.  Far from needing to raise taxes to fund the development, there would actually be money left over for tax cuts.

Instead of needing to pursue a company like Apple for tax evasion, the act of creating a superior product would, at a stroke, provide employment for the country’s engineers and those that assemble and manufacture it.  Meanwhile, teachers, doctors and nurses would be fully bought and paid for, the roads would be mended and children would receive a decent education.  Every citizen would receive free health care at the point of delivery.  In terms of national security, why would anyone attack a country that made such cool phones for them?

The deficit would reduce, because the product would clearly be export-worthy.  For those that protest that there would be no personal profit incentive, so it would never happen, the counter question is this: how much do individual Apple employees really profit from designing and manufacturing the iPhone, individually?  Still don’t believe anybody would bother?  Why did Tim Berners-Lee bother to create the World Wide Web?  Indeed, in what sense is permanent taxation of every working income an incentive to create?

It’s an interesting way at looking at it.  When a company makes so much profit, from the act of designing a successful software-rich product, why shouldn’t a nation do it instead, to fund all the things they currently fund from taxation?  All the counter arguments appear to me to be purely ideological and based in rigid belief systems, rather than rational objections.  The alternative mode of thought is to embrace pure possibility.  Of course, the current political class doesn’t have the skills, knowledge, experience, will or wit to do this, but a different crowd could.  Apple’s staff did build an enterprise that rivals the finances of a nation.  It’s clearly and demonstrably within the realms of human ability.

It doesn’t have to stop there.  A nation could decide to make an Amazon and an eBay, a PayPal and a Google, running on an operating system and computing platform designed and owned by the people.  The profits arising could be shared by all and used to increase the standards of living of every citizen of the nation, not just the one percent, thereby addressing rising inequality.  Indeed, by having directly democratic control over these digital utilities, some of the more egregious practices of these private effective monopolies could be reined in.

There are other ways at looking at the national enterprise rather than through the dogmatic prism of government and civil service.  If the country set its collective mind to producing and making useful things, for profit, the commercial gain could easily pay for all the other things the society wants to do, to provide for its citizens.  The only truly baffling question is why it doesn’t.

More baffling still is why more companies don’t create software-rich products.  When the potential gains are so great, why are there so few companies rising to the challenge?  There is no shortage of useful things needed.