Michael Arrington and Anil Dash weigh in on the perennial debate. My sympathies are with Arrington, who reflects on his disillusionment with the political process since the 2008 presidential election, when he found himself impressed by candidate Barack Obama’s command of tech issues. Since then, however, he has been dismayed by a string of broken promises, and by the Obama administration’s solicitousness towards the interests of the big entertainment conglomerates.

Early in Arrington’s remarks, he describes how ignorance of the technology landscape shapes the legislative debate.

Our government is just way too interested in mucking around in Silicon Valley by creating and enforcing rules based on little or no understanding of the consequences. A perfect example – recent proposed financial reform legislation by Senator Chris Dodd added on a few random provisions that could have devastated Silicon Valley’s delicate venture capital ecosystem.

He goes on to outline his preferred program for the federal government in the technology space, namely capacity-building.

If the government wants to help innovation in this country they should get busy with infrastructure. Lay fiber to every home and business in the U.S. Actually start building some of these high speed train networks to make travel easier. Get computers into the hands of every child in the country as soon as they are physically able to press buttons. Heck, put a woman on the moon. I don’t know if that last one will do much, but at least they’ll be busy not screwing up Silicon Valley while they’re at it.

For half of the post, I’m cheering Arrington on, particularly when he declares, as only he can:

We don’t want handouts. We don’t want “public-private partnerships,” and we sure as hell don’t want legislation.

Yet there’s a certain ingenuousness in Arrington’s analysis. Laying fiber to every home and business is an expensive proposition, and it’s not clear that it should be the role of government first and foremost. The high speed train networks he describes might prove an expensive boondoggle — a far less cost-effective use of public funds than investment in early childhood education. Arrington is not a partisan of small government. Rather, he wants the federal government to get out of his way. He says that he has “always believed that government tends to screw up whatever it touches,” yet he’s sympathetic large-scale public investments in high-speed rail.

Silicon Valley’s social liberalism has made it allergic to conventional conservatism. Perhaps it’s time for a rapprochement. A figure like Mitch Daniels, who places a heavy emphasis on limiting the scope of government while improving the effectiveness of government, might be a good fit for voters who share Michael Arrington’s instincts.

Dash, writing in response to Arrington, makes a compelling point:

But, most importantly, not liking government doesn’t mean it will go away. It just means that only big, slow, customer-hostile tech companies will be the ones influencing policy. In the 90s, Microsoft ignored the entire realm of policy, thinking their hyper-competitive market couldn’t possibly be of interest to regulators. Facebook’s making that same mistake about privacy right now, not realizing that their continuous missteps and shoddy communications are going to doom not just Facebook, but the entire social media industry, to onerous regulations if they don’t get their act together quick enough. And our ostensible voices of leadership are advocating “close your eyes and hope they go away” as a plan of action? It’s clearly time for leaders who are in tune with reality when it comes to regulation.

Of course, this is why we have a permanent upward ratchet in the number of lobbyists and activists dedicated to seizing the reins of power and using it to advance sectional and sectoral interests. Innovative firms are forced to expend scarce resources playing defense. As Dash argues, however, wishing won’t make this set of circumstances go away.