Can the Japanese government improve science and technology by spending more money?

A recent editorial at the Daily Yomiuri begins this way:

Without progress in the fields of science and technology, new industries will stagnate, which may put this nation on the road to decline. How then should the government bolster science and technology--a key source of national strength.

An editorial that starts out this way is already on the wrong foot. Ask yourself this, what is it that everyone needs but doesn't have right now? Does anyone really know? The free market is a place where various producers compete to answer this question, and the one that answers it best succeeds. 

Can the government really compete with the free market in determining what we really need? There's a name for this and it's called central planning. Over half a century ago, the famous Austrian economist F. A. Hayek recognized the following:

 Today it is almost heresy to suggest that scientific knowledge is not the sum of all knowledge. But a little reflection will show that there is beyond question a body of very important but unorganized knowledge which cannot possibly be called scientific in the sense of knowledge of general rules: the knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place. It is with respect to this that practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made, but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active coöperation. 

He goes on in his essay to discuss how the free market, and the price system acting as a means of communicating information, will always succeed far better than a centrally planned economy. The editors of the Daily Yomiuri would be wise to read his essay.