The article is a lot better than the title! (I only skimmed, rather than read it though.) People should read it. I agree with a ton there.

But the article's author has a huge blind spot - if you search the article for "tax", you will see just a couple of occurrences, and the author basically dismisses the mechanism. It's almost as though the author had no idea how the state even gets money - the author just thinks the state's role in innovation is underplayed.

That may be true, but the size of the state depends (obviously) on the size of the economy. It's obvious that if the state invests in innovation that causes a 1000x rise in productivity, hugely increasing the size of the economy, then the state also becomes larger, through the usual mechanisms.

Taxes are how anything is socialized - the author almost behaves as though the state's money comes out of nowhere.

Another good example of applying the title incorrectly would be public education. People generally go to elementary and high school for free. They can then go off to work, sometimes even founding companies, which they could never do if they're illiterate. You could consider education a "risk" on these entrepreneurs: not everyone who becomes literate can create a ton of value in private enterprise, either as a founder or someone working for a good salary at a company; but nobody needed to take a risk on these people in elementary school (with 10 years+ until payoff), the state does it. In fact it's mandatory.[1]

So could we say, "We have socialized the risks of education but privatized the rewards?" (in that you're a free person who is now educated.) Well, yes. But who pays for all that public schooling - everyone does. The author perhaps fails to see the relationship between a state causing an increase in society's private benefits - and the fact that that the state is in a position to do so due to the latter.

All the state is, is a percentage of the economy, which is public. It has a good and important role - but that role comes from being a percentage. The Thatcher quote is appropriate: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money to spend." That never happens if the state remains 20%-30% of the economy. The size of the economy can simply increase indefinitely.

It's not possible (which may surprise the author) for this to happen in a way that doesn't cause the state to also increase in size. So while I agree with the main contention, it bears pointing out that it is a two-way street: private enterprise (and private citizens) get 'free' public goods from state spending, that they don't have to pay for. But the state gets a 'free' percentage of all private enterprise (and private earnings) - in fact, set at whatever it wants. The state can literally tax whatever level it wants and in whatever ways it wants.

So it is, in fact, a two-way street.

[1] see compulsory education - since the 1800's, "Fines were imposed on parents who did not send their children to school and the government took the power to take children away from their parents and apprentice them to others if government officials decided that the parents were "unfit to have the children educated properly"."