Thomas Friedman this weekend wrote a column asking for more stimulus money to go to start-ups rather than bailout failing car companies and banks (again).  Originally I was just go to praise and agree with Friedman until some bloggers came out criticizing his position.  So now I actually have to be persuasive.

Friedman’s argument is we need to stop giving public money to companies that screwed themselves up.  GM and Ford and begging for another $20 billion.  Friedman says let them fail and rightfully so. GM and Ford spent billions lobbying Congress to avoid fuel regulation and letting Toyoda out-innovate them.  After laying of 50,000 employees, these companies want more public money (on top of the $15 billion they already got) for no other reason that avoid economic catastrophe in Michigan.  But why are we rewarding companies that were run so badly?

Silicon Alley Insider says most start-ups are bad and investing them will lead to misallocation of resources.  My question – how much worse than GM and Ford can than these start-ups be?  These massive firms are laying off tens of thousands with little plan on how to fix themselves.  Start-ups, even likely to fail, provide widespread job creation, at least short term,  and creativity and experimentation leading to long term benefits in technology, innovation, and new business models.  Friedman points out, Intel and Google both grew out of recessions – harder economic times make start-ups more grateful for the opportunity and aggressive to succeed.  There’s less a flood of new companies, allowing the cream to truly rise to the top.

Stimulus money shouldn’t hand out money to just anybody.  It should function just like a venture capital firm (with the ability to offer tax credits on top of grants and subsidies).  Money rewards smart business plans that serve the public good – by creating jobs and long term benefits, and even failures can be learned from.  And just like any venture firm, we’re banking on one or two companies actually taking off and paying back the taxpayers with equity.  When do we expect GM, Ford, and all the banks to pay us back?

Risk alone should never be a reason not to do something.  Even failure has benefits; failure is also why we diversify so no loss alone is catastrophic. This means still helping larger companies that provide a tangible plan for how to succeed.  Fixing 10-20 years of bad management can be just as hard as starting a business from scratch – just think about how many start-ups could be built with $20 billion.  This is what risk-benefit analysis is all about.  We are not comparing our risk to benefit.  Rewarding smart and innovative businesses sounds like a good risk to make.