Why "Green" Industrial Policy Can't Work

David Brooks tells us that industrial policy does not work. It has failed to create "green" jobs because government is not good at picking the companies that will survive and prosper. He did not need to produce any evidence to support his claim. Industrial policy is outlawed in conservative dogma. He did so anyway by listing some of the "green" companies that were supported by government but failed. They failed because China was better at industrial policy than the US government. I wonder if Brooks would like to argue that a socialist government is better at industrial policy than a democratic form of government. I also wonder how he would defend the financial industry in its role as the allocator of capital to its most productive uses. It gave us the dot com boom in the 90's, and the real estate bubble, funded with fraudulent securities ( AKA financial innovation) in the last decade. There is one thing that I like about conservatives. You never have to guess what they will say about almost any subject. The catechism was written centuries ago and they stick to it with conviction.