By Charles Kolb for the Huffington Post

The United States has typically avoided the government-sponsored industrial policy of our economic competitors. Americans believe that government should ensure a level playing field that supports fair, market-based competition and not pick "winners and losers." When the Japanese government launched an initiative to back HDTV -- high definition television -- there was a brief flurry of debate here as to whether we should imitate the Japanese. Fortunately, we didn't.