Originally Published: 7/November/2016
Technology has played its part in the evolution of humankind. Through our curious nature it has helped us ask pertinent questions about the world around us, which has allowed us to raise more questions, and then allowed those questions to drive technological and scientific development in the hopes of answering many mysteries about the world around us with the aim of better living and deeper knowledge. With any luck it helps to raise even more questions that are more complex and even more thought provoking which can drive us and inspire us. This can be thought of as the pursuit of intellectual greed to achieve even more knowledge and surpass our current greatness. By pushing our cognitive production possibility frontier (PPF), we can maximise and make more efficient our use of resources to answer these scientific questions of ever increasing complexity.
The economical PPF model and scientific PPF are models that lend to the mutual benefit of one another, a symbiosis of how economics and science work together. If one increases the other increases. More economic policy funding leads to a more open flow of technological and scientific progression, while more scientific efficiency in the PPF can lead to more flows in technological innovation to help increase job creation, increases in exchequer tax takes, and overall country infrastructure and trade agreement development to build a more developed and open economy. This will allow the movement of labour, materials, and finance, continue to be a little less restrictive. Obviously the role of government to regulate this more open flow of economics and science must be carried out in the interest of the citizens to protect them from another type of crisis that will come from a heated economy or “black swan” event but that is writing for another time.
Both of these PPFs are theoretically endless, but how far we go to produce more physical goods and services, and cognitive ideas and innovations is down to us and how well we marry our physical and cognitive capabilities together.
The science and technology culture in Ireland is one of the main drivers of competitive advantage the country has on the world stage with the biggest tech firms setting up presences here to have a foothold in Europe. This culture seeps into sectors like Pharmaceuticals, Business, Computers, Healthcare, and Food & Beverages by having new technologies cut costs, improve products and living standards, and make business flow more freely within the country and also between other countries allowing for increases in trade and opening of new markets to suppliers and customers. This gives the science and technology industries, as a whole, a massive intrinsic value to a wide range of sectors that contribute to the Irish GDP and the GDP per Capita in regards to citizen welfare itself, but also to intellectual progression for the benefit of humankind to help people around the world with applications of newly discovered methods of thinking and application of these methods (The way Keynesian Economics was dominant before being replaced with the New Economic Consensus as an example or how Mercantilism was replaced over time with Ricardo’s ‘Comparative Advantage’).
Ireland’s contribution to science has been impactful with people such as Robert Boyle, Ernest Walton, William Rowan Hamilton, George Stoney, and William Thomson to name a few, by giving their ideas and practices to the world. Modern day Ireland has helped with the European Space Agency (ESA) in their missions and through this partnership has landed tasks by manufacturing parts for equipment that are used to obtain information around our star system. Seventy companies in Ireland have been contracted by the ESA into the production of equipment for their missions ranging from communication, materials, optics, and software.
This type of association helps improve and reinforce our standing within the scientific community globally, but enables the progress and new found knowledge to be used for everyone’s benefit.
So Why Not Become a More Integral Part of CERN?
Our current standing with CERN is ‘Other Non-Member States and territories with Scientific Contacts with CERN’. We occupy the least amount of contact with CERN possible as a country but have scientists doing research to a certain degree for them with no impactful economic resonance back to our country, with only a slight tremor to increase our scientific standing. As a country with a strong science and technology culture, it just seems that we have dropped the ball on a fantastic opportunity to be rubbing elbows with the best, most proactive, and indeed incredibly exciting time in particle physics (and physics in general) since the late 1920’s.
Exposing ourselves to this cutting edge scientific and technological pioneering will grant us more avenues to explore and this exploration will allow innovation in many fields that can have a positive shock wave effect into others fields (also there will be negative effects in others) but as history has shown, improvements in technology and improvements in science has led to the overall standard of living for people to increase by either eradicating a disease, improving our methods of communications with family who have moved half way around the world, allowed us to travel more freely, see the Earth from perspectives we have never seen before, improved the food and medicine we have to allow us live longer, healthier, and more fruitful lives, and improve our knowledge of everything around us to make us more wholesome and understanding of one another. Yes there are insidious contortionists of these fantastic innovations who wish to manipulate for their own well-being, but it is up to you as a person to realise what is in your best interests and what is not.
That is why Ireland should do its best to become a full participating member of CERN. To allow it to strengthen and reinforce the culture we have participated proactively in, internally and externally, with the global scientific community, and to take our rightful share all the benefits that will bring in a fiscal, economical, technological, and social way. It will allow an increase in our PPF and help grow our GDP/GNP and GDP/GNP per capita as Irish made end products in this sphere will showcase the love and talent of our scientific workforce and increase production to be used in space missions and commercially around the world for the benefit of everyone. A possible spur in sectors affected by this would see increases in activity, but that will also mean increases in some places will have decreases in others, so to combat this extra funding for re-education will need to be looked at on the political-fiscal level, and a nation grows when the cycle of technology and education feed one another.
About Author
Jonathan McEvoy is an Irish based border control post inspector for the Irish Government and Europe Union who took up his role in 2019 in response to British withdrawal of trade agreements, which was a position taken up after time spent working within the financial services sector in Dubai. He is an economics and finance postgraduate from Waterford Institute of Technology and a community stalwart in his home city of Waterford having been elected to serve on many boards of directors around the city in a voluntary capacity. His love of writing has a deep theme of economics in every published article which talk about history, philosophy, finance, politics, and society. His writings are grounded in practical observations away from the theoretical hypothesis of hypothetical potentials. If you are looking for a modern digestible viewpoint on modern economic ideas with a focus practicality and no holding back, he is a writer for you.
Find Jonathan on the social platforms @jonathanmcev0y
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