Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Molecules
manganese4 writes "They've been discussed before in relation to Google, but the American Chemical Society has launched a new effort against perceived competitors. They are attempting to limit the government's ability to freely publish the results of scientific work paid for by tax dollars. The British journal Nature and the Univeristy of California reports on efforts by the ACS in attempting to shutdown a free database, PubChem, of molecular structures because it competes head to head with the fee-for-service Chemical Abstract Service. Their rationale is that the government should not spend taxpayer dollars on something private business is already doing. Luckily the government has not backed down."
For instance, private and public health care as well as transportation work very well together.
The owls are not what they seem
Data mining is becoming more and more important for science. But you can't do data mining if the data is locked up and requires cumbersome and costly subscriptions to access.
Chemical, biological, and other scientific databases need to be open, free, and freely redistributable for science and technology to continue to make rapid progress.
Guess we can shut down public schools then, now, eh?
Their rational is that...
That's rationale, you illiterate clod.
I guess your government shouldn't be paying for any of the research either, then, including the research done by graduate and doctoral students. Maybe time to send a bill to every company employing one of those people?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Why do they want to shut down a database that could help them find / verify their own data ?
They could even just dig data out of it and save some energy for value-added work that they could charge for. At least, this is how I saw it work in mechanical engineering.
*squeak*
When Osama Bin Laden will apply for US govt to remove and stop funding the US Army, because private parties (him) own private military groups?
Corporate-owned Police, IRS replaced by Mafia, and of course schools under management of MTV. Go Private Property!
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
I'm generally against the idea of the government spending money obtained through illegal, coercive measures (read: taxes) on much of anything. That said, scientific research is probably one of the best uses they can make of the money they steal from us... so as long as they're going to continue stealing our money, I think resources like this should be kept freely available to the public. After all, we **already paid for it.**
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Government shouldn't pay for something that the private sector is already doing. Full stop.
So if I start my own fire brigade I should demand that publicly funded fire fighing be outlawed?
Libraries should be closed since booksellers are missing out on sales?
Private schols certainly have a distorted market with public schools being provided.
Who decides what is critical for the government to provide? Would you not say that health care, for instance, falls under providing safety?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
The question of whether governments should finance research is a separate issue.
http://redcone.net
A government is an entity which should protect a group of people's interests, namely the citizens of a nation. This includes science.
Also, i believe that scientific knowledge is not even the property of humanity, let alone a corporation. It is fine that they want to sell that information as long as a free choice exists, but when they try to get rid of that free "competition", then we need to take a stand. Science should be open for everyone, the application of science is where companies should strive for profit.
It is possible to consider science the ultimate law of the universe, thus if viewed from this perspective restricting scientific knowledge would be the same as damaging a person's freedom.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
reading this really raised some eyebrows for me.
he gets paid more than the president?
In other words, you belive that if the government provides a service it will do so cheaper and better than the private sector, and push them out of the market. I simply don't belive that. The only way that can happen is if public companies manage to change the law in their favour. Otherwise, free competition will in the long run favour the private sector.
All these companies that are complaining about the government taking away their profit by competing with them are doing is whine about the fact that they're losing grip of their monopoly and have to start competing. If the private sector is so bad at providing a service that even public companies are able to compete with them, they truly need the competition.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
When will society become outraged at the corporate mindset? The mindset that says that society can not be enriched if it costs the corporation or in this case the "not-for-profit" organization?
It is unfortunate that the only way that society can protect itself is to become and stay fighting mad. I don't want to be angry all of the time but the world is filled with greedy assholes who would turn our world into a hopeless pit of poverty if left unchecked.
Can a Utopian world where even the poorest among us can live comfortably and a corporate world where piggy CEOs can slurp up million dollar salaries coexists? If not, I for one choose Utopia.
So I say to all of the greedy sons-of-bitches "Don't get in the way of a better world. Adapt or die!"
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Just from glancing at the PubChem site, it seems like its main function at the moment is to find journal articles relevant to a given chemical. This is probably what worries the ACS most, as there are already plenty of databases online that provide info about chemical properties (such as the NIST Chemistry Webbook or the Spectral Database Server), they just don't link to journal articles. It would be fairly outrageous for the ACS to complain about these.
At any rate, the ACS's complaints seem pretty silly to me, as I only know of a few systems for finding chem journal articles (CAS, Beilstein and SciFinder Scholar). I would guess they're all horrendously expensive, and only accessible to individuals at university libraries, so a free system like this would certainly be great for the average citizen. Additionally, it may well be worth the government's while, in terms of cost, to develop a free system for their own use.
Your libertarian ideology, as ever, has little thought for practical matters.
Libertarians argue, for instance, that there should be no public health care and that people should have to pay. Ignoring the fact that it is rather inhumane to demand payment for healing someone, this results in poor people suffering as they cannot afford medical bills. What, exactly, is wrong with a government monopoly over this? By promoting private health care, libertarians are, in effect, causing illness and lowering the life expectency of fellow human beings. I simply say, put yourself in their shoes.
Another example: here in the UK we have the BBC. The BBC's website is probably one of the most linked-to websites from Slashdot, because it is a fantastic public interest resort. It's publically funded. UK citizens, on trips to the US, comment how low quality, and advert-rife, US television is compared to even commercial channels in the UK. This is because the BBC ups the standard and creates a high level for other channels to achieve. Note that the BBC is not the only provider of TV channels!
The government's job is (or should be!) to keep people alive. Sure, this should be done by having a military, police and courts. But everyone loses out if we allow corporations to monopolise fundamental human rights like the most important of all, the right to life.
Libertarianism is too much an ideology, with too little thought for the real world. Please reconsider your views, with more compassion for people who are likely to suffer because of them.
Chris
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
Perhaps you're right, but the research done for this database was done using tax money, not private money. If the database was managed by a private institution, that would mean tax payers would pay for it twice.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
One option would be to sell this new database to the competitor?
I agree the government should normally keep its hands off, but some things are either just too important or simply don't work well in a capitalist system (for example the police). Im not sure about this particular case, it seems like it probably shouldn't have been created in the first place and now its too late - why did a government department need to create this database if they could have just used the existing one? Although that has its own issues i.e. companies ripping of governments - if there's one un-patriotic thing to do its charging your government through the roof for your products/services, and sadly that's what most big business is about.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Who finds it ironic that Nature charges for access to an article championing free access to information?
www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
You're right. Publicly funded research should be abolished. Nothing that has ever come out of any public university should be available for free. Who needs such things as theory of relativity, quantum theory, Space programs with all the technology coming from it.
Give me abreak...there is too much work that needs to be done, but that no company would do, because it doesn't pay off quickly enough. See, I'm not even saying not paying off. Just not paying off in the same year, or the next year.
See all the hoopla about the cell processor. That was a joint venture of 3 of the biggest private corporations out there...and one of the biggest undertakings of private enterprises. The investment was something like 2 billions, the timeframe was something like 4 years. That is about the most extreme limit any private research and enginieering project would go. Any research, that needs more time and dedication simply wouldn't exist without payment of the gouvernment.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
You believe that it is vital that information be free, but essential that the government not keep it free.
Were you perhaps hoping that the Good Fairy That Lives In The Sky will wave her magic Wand O' Libertarianism and suddenly make commercial organizations want to provide free access to scientific research? Personally, I'd rather that when the public has paid for research to be done it be made available to the public -- even if that does annoy large corporations and Libertarians.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
This type of thinking reminds me of Europe in the Middle Ages. Guilds were then allowed to regulate (read monopolise) all branches of industry and trade, backed by government enforcers. Even the most basic information was "trade secret" and not to be revealed to non guildmembers. The perfect job protection scheme, and one of the reasons that Europe was at that time eclipsed by the Arab world in scientific, medical, and technological achievements. I submit that the Government, in looking after the public interest, has every right to support valuable generation (universities) and dissemination (universities and this online service) of knowledge. And since when did the ACS acquire copyright on basic chemical knowledge?
should we also accept that it is the government's job to provide that medicine?
Speaking as someone who has benefited directly and indirectly from a nationalised health service, I say yes, most certainly it is.
Hell, it's rare that I actually require its services, but I don't bergudge the tax I pay to support it at all. Just because *I* don't need it, doesn't mean that my friends and loved ones don't. Even if they don't, people will, and I for one don't mind paying a little extra every month to help make society that little bit better.
Let me ask yo ua question: why must everything be about profit? Why can some things not be done simply because it is the right thing to do?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Government shouldn't pay for something that the private sector is already doing. Full stop.
"Full stop"? Oh brother.
As a tax-payer, I'm rather more concerned that my tax-dollars be spent well and for good-purpose.
Often private companies can indeed do a better job, and it's good if the government gets out of the way in such cases (easier said than done of course).
However, sometimes it just doesn't work out that way. Some tasks are accompanied by burdens of transparency, accountability, fairness, etc., and efficiency isn't the most important factor; in such cases the a government agency may just work better in practice, despite inefficiency.
We live, as we dream -- alone....
That being said it is strange that they are so vehemently against an NIH database which is primary geared towards biological compounds (i.e. proteins and nucleic acids and derivatives) which is pretty orthogonal to most of the chemical research world. But it would be a gross oversimplification to paint the ACS as an evil money grubbing organization.
Besides, chemists are rarely evil. Science fiction proves it's always an overweight doctor come-geneticist played by marlon brando that's evil.
One of the methods of thought in the US is that, because our system of laws is (in theory) based purely on logic and not on emotional appeal. Please stop using emotional appeals to get laws passed ("Think of the children!"). Instead, try something like "providing universal health care will decrease crime, and by transitivity, prevent the use of force."
Oh, and I forgot to mention - despite having the NHS here in the UK, we still have a thriving private healthcare system, for those who have the money to pay for it.
Just because the government provides something for the good of all, doesn't mean that companies will find it impossible to make money providing the same thing. It's just like any other form of competition - you just have to find a way to differentiate your offering, and make it more compelling to some section of the target demographic.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
"Providing universal healthcare will help avoid creating a divide in society between the haves and have nots, such as the divide that many believe is slowly destroying the USA"?
This is a recipe for disaster. What about immunisations? What about the stocks of anthrax antidotes Uncle Sam stock piled after the scare in 01?
May be CDC should be out sourced to Pfizer. After all I am sure CompuServe has a very good case against NSF and DOD for ruining their business with this thing called the Internet.
And the Internet has ruined all out freedoms.
the sig
A logical argument:
argument 2:
An action leading to a change in the working population structure has huge effects to the entire society. Extreme care needs to be taken when legislating about this.
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
Donations from you, me, and whoever else is interested in a publically-accessible and free database of molecule structures, to keep it online forever. Someone to be 'librarian', accepting new ones, accepting revisions which correct defects in old ones.
It's got to be done, and it's got to be free for all to see. Otherwise mistakes will be made.
And when I sequence a protein, or solve its structure, I don't do it for the greater glory of the ACS. I do it for a completely different purpose.
Maybe the US government is the wrong organisation to own and operate it. Not everyone agrees with their policies, and they tend to change every 4 years anyway.
But count me in, if you want a donation.
Says who? Of course laws aren't based on pure logic. Whats logical about murder being illegal- nothing, except an emotional wish not to be killed. The law isn't and should not be limited to logic. The law is a system of rules used to enhance the life of society. Some of these will be logic based (hey, maybe dumping toxic waste all over isn't a good idea), some will be emotional (hey, we shouldn't let sick people go untreated, its inhumane).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I recall a recent story about NOAA data. How Accuweather had some beef with publicly available weather informaiton, which the tax payers had already paid for, because they were trying to sell it.
I for one do not feel like paying for the same thing twice.
"The government's job is (...) Military, Police, and Courts."
There is no such thing as an intrinsic State mission. Anarcho-capitalist theorists such as Murray Rothbard suggest to privatize military, police and courts.
In a nation, the authority's job is whatever the people decide it is. This can be as little or as much as they want. It is a mere matter of taste.
To the extent that government funds help jumpstart lagging scientific research, the same amount of freedom is lost.
So, you say that industry-funded research is more free than goverment funded research? Do you work for the Tobacco industry or something?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Every encroachment it makes results in the diminishment of freedom for its citizens
Damn right. Give them the freedom to starve, be ignorant and sick and poisoned. Nobody needs goverment schools, heath care, social security or environmental health regulations. Hey, so long as enron can make more money.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
The government's job is to make sure the citizenry is protected against foreign invaders, provide a reasonable level of safety, and provide a forum in which aggrieved parties can have an impartial entity adjudicate issues. In short: Military, Police, and Courts. The government should protect its citizens from private industry's attempt to gain sole ownership and control of information.
that the DB is simply cateloging what was discovered on taxpayer (read as OUR) money. IOW, this is simply trying to get the most for our money. I do not have an issue with that. In fact, I would have more of an issue if they did not.
Keep in mind, that the private sector can do all sorts of interesting things. Manipulate the data so that it is better to access. Or perhaps offer a secure DB with encrypted data where a company who does private research can sell that data, or can buy as needed. There is plenty of space for private enterprise.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
it was the Libertarian POV that prevailed in early America and allowed the USA to excell.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Did you stop to think this over? Seems like a knee jerk small govt rant unrelated to the issue. For instance ...
>growing government bureaucracy.
This is a database.
>Would you not have a grievance if the government decided to take away your job?
Would you be comfortable with whoever was in power granting monopoly status to private sector scientific databasing?
Even if it wasn't your party?
>If we accept that it is the government's job to research medicine, should we also accept that it is the government's job to provide that medicine?
Isn't this two questions and can I say 'yes' and 'sometimes'?
At what point does this become 'protectionism'? The European's, for instance, do a lot of good research.
Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it.
Chemistry society goes head to head with NIH in fight over public database
Emma Marris, Washington DC
Many chemists might not know it, but the organization that represents them in the United States is fighting to limit their free access to chemical information. The American Chemical Society says that a new publicly funded database of molecules threatens its own fee-based Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), and it is lobbying politicians to restrict the free version. But it is having trouble convincing members that this is in their interests.
CAS is part of many chemists' daily routine. The service is a massive registry of chemicals with their structures and properties, as well as links to related publications and patents.
Depending on their size, chemistry departments and companies pay from a few thousand to more than a hundred thousand dollars for a year's access to the database.
Chemists have had no alternative. A journal search will not find a chemical structure, so the database is the only way to find previously reported molecules and reactions, short of wading through papers by hand.
"CAS is very important," says Chris Reed, an inorganic chemist at the University of California, Riverside. "My students use it all the time, for mining the literature or finding the compounds they want."
PubChem, a free database launched by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) last September, threatens CAS's monopoly. It is smaller, containing 650,000 molecules so far compared with CAS's 25 million. And it is aimed more at biologists, linking to information such as gene sequences, and related papers in the NIH's PubMed archive of biomedical journals.
650,000 and rising
But it is growing. On 25 May, records were added from NMRShiftDB, a database of chemicals' nuclear magnetic resonance spectra, and from Nature Chemical Biology, which requires all authors to submit their data to PubChem. Other sources are likely to follow.
The ACS argues that projects that compete with the private sector are a waste of taxpayers' money. The database generates the lion's share of the non-profit ACS's income of $375 million, which pays for the society's publications, meetings and staff.
So the society is trying to persuade Congress to make the NIH restrict its database to molecules found by NIH researchers.
Steve Bryant, project director for PubChem, says that's unfair, because the linked content provided by the two databases is different, and they serve different audiences.
Bob Massie, head of CAS, disagrees. "We have been hearing that every chemical researcher understands that PubChem is a substitute for CAS," he says.
To try to limit PubChem to information produced by NIH researchers, the ACS has been working with lawmakers in Ohio, where CAS employs almost 1,300 people. In particular, it has lobbied congressman Ralph Regula (Republican, Ohio), the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that allocates money to the NIH.
The society's efforts have intensified ahead of this week's expected debut of the 2006 House Appropriations bill that outlines the agency's proposed budget. As Nature went to press, the draft bill was due on 9 June. An official report accompanying the bill was expected to ask the NIH to limit PubChem to data produced by its own efforts. The report is not legally binding, but if the bill is passed it would be difficult for the NIH to ignore.
Although many chemists are unaware of the ACS's attempt to restrict PubChem, weblogs and library discussion groups have picked up the subject. The fight is turning sour. "My only interpretation of the ACS's recent actions is that it is no longer trying to represent the best interests of the scientists who form its membership," says Richard Roberts, a chemist at New England Biolabs in Beverly, Massachusetts, and 1993 Nobel laureate, who advises PubChem. "Rather, it seems to be a commercial enterpri
This time I could be arsed.
Attacking the argument because it sounds like Libertarianism invalidates your response on rhetorical grounds, just as I would invalidate my response if I attacked you as a Socialist. Your comparison of television quality is not relevant to the issues at hand.
IMO, if the government (read the taxpayers) pays for the research, then the results should be distributed. It is no longer proprietary, and the ACS has no right to lock up the information.
The other issue is, "Should the government be paying for the research?" Well, IMO, the only legitimate use of the national government is for National Defense and the administration of Justice.
The strength of our administration of justice (which is certainly NOT perfect) is well illustrated by the ease with which we in the US can obtain title or ownership of private property such as cars and land, compared to say, Central America or Mexico.
When the government re-allocates confiscated wealth (tax dollars), it funds inefficient industries and gives an unfair advantage to a select few. In the US, this has never been demonstrated more clearly than government funding of the railroads: The only profitable, efficient railroad in the American West was the Great Northern, which was unsupported by government funds and financed by Henry Hill and investors. We won't know what effect the the government has on our industrial development until some time in the future when we can look back and analyze it. I'm pretty certain that government programs are somewhat beneficial, but I believe that private enterprise would be more beneficial in the long run.
Who knows what chemical research is not being done because there's more funding in a competitive area?
Also, in my mind, a bigger question is not, "Should they?" or "Shouldn't they?", but "What is the best way of overcoming the shortcomings of both paths?"
Now, on a personal note: I'm NOT a big fan of the UK. They have one of the worst records for civil rights of any government on earth, my "Economist Pocket World in Figures" indicates that the US purchasing power is second-highest in the world and about 20% greater than the UK, Canada, Japan and Germany, I'm apalled that the people of the UK let the government confiscate their personal property (such as weapons collections after the 1988 Security Act), and that, while homicides have declined in the UK, other violent crime is growing significantly, that heart transplants and bypasses (which can be gotten in the US within a couple of weeks) take an average of 3 months in the UK (if they will let you have one), and much, much more.
Oh, yeah, British TV sucks (boring), but people who live their lives to suck on the glass teat get what they deserve. American TV isn't any better.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Perhaps we should think about what PubChem is doing relative to science, not the private sector. For peer reviewed publications, especially for research funded by the public, the only way to validate the results is to have access to them in the context of the science being studied.
PubChem is not just storing molecules, but the raw data of the interaction of these molecules with biological assays. The molecules, by themselves, are probably not that useful. This is something the private sector is not really doing.
Full disclosure here, my company writes the software that NIH is using to write PubChem. They do get it for no cost though.
IF the government can do better than the private sector, then it SHOULD, by all means. There are few enough areas that this tends to wor out, tho.
Me (Blog)
His college transcript is better than the president's. Let that be a lesson to us: your permanent record really does follow you around.
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
If you read what the Constitution is based on (John Locke's writings, primarily), you will see that the origins of our system are based on the idea that the Constitution is a paper document which delineates goals and rules, and in order to have a fair society, emotion must be avoided when making decisions.
Murder is logical because the US was founded on the principles of preventing the use of force (a Libertarian ideal, mind you), and preventing/punishing murder is preventing/discouraging the use of force.
Maybe it's not directly relevant, however it's on the same topic - public enterprise is not necessarily bad. The healthcare is an example of a serious issue, the television is a not-so-serious issue but highlights that public services are not as bad as some people make them out to be. I also consider myself a social democratic liberal. Now, back to your post.
It's funny you mention railroads, since the privatisation of the rail network in the UK was one of the worst decisions made in this country. There have been numerous crashes (resulting in many deaths) due to negligence on behalf of the managing company, the running costs are high, resulting in exorbitant ticket costs and huge bailouts by the government. Natural monopolies, such as ownership of train tracks, should be run by an accountable, public service company (similar to the BBC).
The strength of US justice is one reason why people are more well off, compared to Central America, but that is completely at a tangent. Why does this invalidate the reasoning for having a public high-safety-net healthcare system?
The reason why the government had amnesties for collecting guns is because a gun has no other use apart from to injure others. It isn't confiscating personal property, since the guns were illegal to buy in the first place (unless they are really old guns). It's the same reasoning as buying a slave (illegally) and then the government forcing you to set the slave free. It was never yours to be able to buy to begin with.
Yes, transplants might take longer. But you don't have to pay through the nose to get it done! The option to have it done faster and pay for it is also there (through BUPA).
Chris
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
I forgot to ask -- can you please define "inhumane"? Please, delineate the definition in a way that it can be accurately legislated 100% of the time. In theory, all laws should be based on impartiality, and capriciously declaring something as "inhumane" every time you don't like the current situation is just idiotic.
For example, I am morally against abortions. However, I am not about to make an emotional appeal that abortions are "inhumane", because there is no impartial way of proving it. Instead, a logical argument must be used, and because I have yet to hear a strong logical argument free of emotional appeal, I do not yet support any legislation illegalizing abortions.
Total BS.
You do realize that the government gives grants and scholarships to students right?
I think you have a very naive view of the role of Government. It's not just to play police but also to make sure the various facets of your daily life go smoothly.
Do you like food that doesn't kill you or drugs that are effective? That's the FDA.
Do you like knowing you won't be defrauded by huge companies [*] or investment scams? That's SEC.
Do you like knowing that your kids can go to a school where there are minimal standards that are required to advance? That's another facet of state government.
Do you like driving on roads with street signs and lights?
Do you like electricity that follows north american standards?
Do you like standard cryptography that can protect [**] your banking and medical transactions?
etc, etc, etc...
The government has a hand in many aspects of your daily life that you either ignore or didn't know about.
Yes, all these things could be ran by the CEO of their respective companies. Schools could have their own curriculum and standards. Water plants could have their own levels of "clean enough". etc, etc, etc...
You vote for your government to represent you on these issues. That's why you have NIST for example.
In the case of a chemical database there is no reason why a publicly funded org can't do it. If it's the will of the people then so be it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
BBC is also politically funded, mainly to protect UK interests. In the interest of all, the government should limit information and data. Freedom to share information must be upheld for all mankind.
"Their rational is that the government should not spend taxpayer dollars on something private business is already doing"
Of course, you can turn this around: private business shouldn't spend its investor's money on something the government is already doing.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Service.java:2: illegal combination of modifiers: public and private
public private void service() {
^
1 error
Funny that your "logical" response did not get modded up at all.
Rebuttal to 1:
You ignore the creation of charities. A lot of Libertarians believe that the government has usurped the role of charities, including but not limited to providing healthcare to the needy.
Rebuttal to 2:
Society will then start paying more for people to to do "undesirable but essential" jobs. Being essential is pretty much the definition of being paid for no matter what.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
There is no need for the government to make a redundant database, when someone else is already doing it and selling access at-cost. Even if ACS was trying to make a buck, the argument wouldn't change.
Any profits made from its databases are used to further science, as ACS is a not-profit.
Libertarians argue, for instance, that there should be no public health care and that people should have to pay.
Yep.
Ignoring the fact that it is rather inhumane to demand payment for healing someone, this results in poor people suffering as they cannot afford medical bills.
Possibly. There is also charity.
What, exactly, is wrong with a government monopoly over this?
There's at least four problems with this. One, you don't control how your money is spent. Two, government is much more wasteful than an informed consumer. Three, by shirking off medical matters to government one no longer feels compelled to offer charity to others. There's always the excuse that the government is funding medical matters, so why help? Fourth, when the government ends up becoming tied up with medical companies (for example, look at pharmaceutical companies in the US) it's incredibly difficult to excise the corruption and restore the nominally overflated rate of government decisions.
By promoting private health care, libertarians are, in effect, causing illness and lowering the life expectency of fellow human beings.
Ah, I didn't realize that private health care caused illnes. Perhaps you meant promotes illness?
I simply say, put yourself in their shoes.
I'll put myself in their shoes. And I'll be incredibly pissed off because service X is considered too expensive with my HMO plan and my family can't pay for it and there's no time to have a charity drive. Or maybe it isn't considered too expensive, but I'll spend the rest of my life paying off medical bills. Of course, in a public health care system, I'd just die (I doubt service X would be available readily, if at all, under public health care).
Of course, that's also the option of death in private health care if I can't find a hospital to take care of me when I can't pay. But, that really comes down to hospitals having the charity to treat those who are in need even when they can't pay. That's just as true in a public health care system. The government can't with the wave of a magic wand or any fixed amount of value in money make everyone better. As much as I fear dying, I'd rather die than see a lot of people needlessly throw their money (ie, their time and energy) on a hopeless case because they're unwilling to admit that people do eventually die and there are limits where one should try. Of course below that limit, I hope that they have the compassion to freely help me if I am unable to pay. But how can I demand that by force of others?
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
"Oh, yeah, British TV sucks (boring), but people who live their lives to suck on the glass teat get what they deserve. American TV isn't any better." How about CCTV9 compared to BBC and CNN?
Let me ask yo ua question: why must everything be about profit? Why can some things not be done simply because it is the right thing to do?
Not everything must be about profit. Things should be done because they're the right thing to do. That doesn't mean it's okay to force people to do the right thing. A Libertarian and a Conservative aren't the same things. Conservatives care about money. Libertarians care about liberty. Sure there might be lots of SOB Libertarians who wouldn't help you if you're in need (hardly a Libertarian-centric trait), but some of us just want to help you because we think it's the right thing to do, not because we have the choice of helping or punishment*; when you receive charity from ones you love and care for it is quite different from a check from the government.
So, maybe it is a bit delusional to think everyone will do the right thing (I don't believe that's true). But doing something which is clearly not right (punishing* people for not helping) obviously isn't a solution.
*The punishment I speak of is through government force, be it through the taking of money or the imprisonment for failure to comply. Social punishment (ie, not talking to them, trying to make them feel shame for not being helpful, etc) is certainly fine because they can ignore you; of course that risks burning bridges, but it's their right to take such risks.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
he gets paid more than the president?
Most of the executives of mid-to-large sized companies make more than the president. And that includes "non-profit" companies, which just mean they don't generate any net revenue, not that their employees don't make a ton of money out of some mythical sense of benevolence (although, non-profits do have an amazing ability to con such benevolent people into volunteering at the lowest levels, doing the gruntwork for free so the CEO can take home 2.5 million instead of a mere 1.7 million).
On the other hand, harboring a database like this, seems to me outside of the public interest.
No, the database itself most definitely does serve the public interest... Trying to secure exclusive access to that data, however, does not.
Personally, I had the apparently-erroneous belief that you couldn't copyright/patent/trademark/whatever mere facts, only the application of those facts, or the layout of specific collections of those facts. So, while the ACS could stop someone from downloading their entire database and reselling access to it, they don't have much say in someone else offering their own version of the same basic information.
Then again, I also would have thought you couldn't patent trivial boolean operators such as XOR. Silly me.
So, people should form health care unions or scientific research unions. To a certain extent it's been shown that people are willing to do the latter, SETI@home. What makes you think that it'd be impossible to convince a group of people to fund research that would help everyone? Or is it simply because there's no way a person would willingly fund a project that might somehow help others without them contributing? Look at collaborative GPLed projects that shows how untrue that is; realize a lot of research would make patents or copyrighted documents that will allow for a GPL-like license to cover access.
But yes, of course, government is the one and only answer. Screw pushing for any other ideas because that'd require way too much continuous effort. Let's push everything into government. I mean, heck, if a web server in the kernel is a good idea, then surely government funded scientific research is stellar.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
They're already trying. The scumbags at AccuWeather and Weather Channel, Inc. have bought themselves a senator to push their agenda. They feel exactly as the ACS does, and why? They can make more money by prohibiting the NWS from releasing weather information. They will still be allowed to release emergency information. Ummm, don't you need the regular weather to know when its gonna get nasty?2 00226jun20,1,5138022.story?coll=chi-technology-hed
For more information about how Sen. Rick Santorum has been bought by the weather corporations, read here. http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0506
If your arguments are true then American health care should be better than in countries that have a publicly provided health service. However:
As for rationing of services. Yes, there is rationing in the UK. This increased enormously in the Thatcher years when the NHS was subject to "Market Forces". It is gradually getting better. We do have some rationing by price in the UK, but at least part of this is caused by NHS consultants who also have private practices. It is obviously in their interest to ensure that NHS waiting lists are long, so that people will pay to use their services privately.
Cleanliness is currently an issue in some UK hospitals. The major reason for this is that cleaning and maintenance was outsourced and the private contractors do not do a very good job.
How about a bumper sticker that says, "Don't Rip Me Off, I voted for Socialized Medicine, Please Find a Republican Instead."
I wish I had modpoints.
Luke-Jr
If your arguments are true then American health care should be better than in countries that have a publicly provided health service
:)
Not necessarily. That's the irony of the American system. It's so corrupt right now that it's already beaten out the wholly public health care systems in other country. What do I mean by that? On the one hand, the US pays subsidies to pharmaceutical companies. On the other hand, the US pays out more per capita on health care than the UK--the US doesn't spend it on everyone, though. As I recall, healthcare in the US is almost twice as much in the US than the UK. Obviously funneling money to medical companies then paying about lots more than what other governments pay for those on medicare/medicaid is just a huge funneling of tax payer money into medical companies. Now, maybe some of this somehow trickles into new treatments that are cheaper in other countries because they don't have to do all the R&D, but a large part of that is just another way to hide pork spending being funneled to a certain industries.
Of course, even if all of the above were not true, it's possible that the public health care system would be cheaper for a while. It'd be in the long term that there'd be the tyranny, the revolts, etc. The US just happens to have a hybrid system that went corrupt a lot faster. Perhaps that's because it was hybrid.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Question: is it worth running the risk of the ups and downs of the free market, when you are dealing with life-threatening situations?
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
I think we're mostly in agreement here, you're just more articulate. :-)
I've seen fundraising nonprofits fold because the administrators got too big for their britches. So I see what you mean by the compsensation.
but bringing the post back to the original poster, I volunteer for the local chamber of commerce in a struggling neighborhood. Since i'm on the membership committee, we look for new and current business owners, i.e. retail shops, restaurants, and provide a marketing resource for them to bounce off ideas to grow their business. We compete with the government as a resource, namely the alderman's office. Some use us, some don't, but generally the ones that do, find success.
My point is that it's a private institution. It can handle a little bit of competition.
I think anyone of us would be somewhat pissed if we worked hard to create a successful business, only to be driven out of it by a government subsidized effort which was able to undercut your prices because it received free money from the taxpayers.
That's essentially what these programs are: corporate welfare; taking tax-payer dollars and giving it to some corporate entity (whether it be a non-profit, city or a university) to subsidize some effort.
While I'll be the first to agree that some programs are worth subsidizing (law enforcement and health care being examples), what happens to the argument that free and open markets lead to more efficient practices? When and why doesn't it apply in these cases?
Students would be more likely to afford college on their own if the government didn't take the tax money used to fund such grants.
FDA can be privatised-- food companies pay to get their products checked and are then authorised to use the FDA-approved logo. Let the people have an option to risk non-approved food if they so wish.
Government should not be involved in education, period.
A private company could be responsible for the roads just as easily as government could. There's too many lights as it is, though.
People only care about electrical standards because of what is commonly used by electrical appliances.
You can refuse to use a bank run by idiots w/o cryptography-- they will either adapt or go out of business.
If it's the will of certain people to pay for a chemical database, then those people can pay an annual fee to some private company.
Luke-Jr
Not everything must be for profit (cf. non-profit corporations), but it's better that the private sector do something than the public sector, all other things being equal, because you gain consumer and producer surpluses, which you lose with tax-funded public ventures. The catch, of course, is "all other things being equal", which is often not the case. Here, though, I'd say that the ACS does a pretty good job with CAS and SciFinder.
Such irE
The ACS is a useless organization, and I speak as a practicing chemist of many years. Nothing - and let me repeat this for emphasis - nothing that they have done has ever had any positive impact on my job or career. I toss their monthly letter inviting me to rejoin unopened into the trash. It would be money flushed down the toilet. They could disappear tomorrow, and I would not notice. Except for less junk mail, I guess.
Can you tell that I think they are a bunch of worthless pantloads? Just checking.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Suppose you removed the FDA from the picture. Do you think food companies would advise their customers of the potential risks?
Take climatix it's 27% effective and has only caused 18 heart attacks in our 24 case patients!
As for education, it's a big world. The sooner you realize that the better. Global standards in education are not something to be mandated by every school CEO but something that will give you a fighting chance in the real world.
As for "roads". Private companies build the roads already. But do you want to pay a toll for every turn you make on your way to work? That's what private roads means.
As for electricity standards it isn't just what's common but what's mandated. Would you like everything in your home to be vaporized because "there are no standards"? Who's gonna set the standards [not just on the desired results but averages, tolerance, uptime]. Same goes for telecon.
As for banking, who do you whine to when all your money in the world has been leached from a bank account? The bank itself or the FBI?
etc, etc, etc.
The thought that private corporations will act with your wellbeing in mind over their profits is just ludicrous. Look at companies like Walmart and McDonalds [among many others]. Pay their employees crap and sell very low quality goods because for the most part they can get away with it.
You could say "people have a choice" but when you can sell a 1$ meal to someone who isn't smart enough to question it [because why should they, McDonalds is trying to sell a quality meal] the real restaurants lose out.
And that's just the point. People think like you. They think that the clerk is smiling because they want to help you get that low rate mortgage or a fuel efficient car. They don't realize that it's just about a sale. That's the private world for you.
Now granted the government [of pretty much any nation] has and can find ways to mess things up. It doesn't mean we should remove the government from any control. Afterall we elected the government that is supposed to enforce these standards in the first place!!!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Obviously the government shouldn't have a police force, since that takes businress away from private security companies. Nor should the government run schools, since that takes money away rom private education. And having an army is unfair competition for mercenaries.
Where can I get a torrent?
If molecules are open source, then people will be able to make them in their own homes, without appropriate supervision or regulation. Many people may not be aware of the following facts about molecules.
-All known chemical poisons are made of molecules.
-Osama bin Laden's men were carrying molecules when they boarded the aircraft destined to strike the WTC towers. It is believed these molecules were used in the attack.
-Molecules are frequently used as part of copyright infringement schemes. Bootleg DVDs contain high concentrations of molecules.
-Weapons of mass destruction contain molecules.
Please, will someone think of the of children?
~Idarubicin
There is no such thing as an intrinsic State mission. Anarcho-capitalist theorists such as Murray Rothbard suggest to privatize military, police and courts.
Unfortunatly, in capitalist business, the customer is always right, and any business would happily lose a customer willing to pay X in order to gain a customer willing to pay 2X. What does that imply in a capitalist court when it decides who's right?
Some may observe that it seems that way now. Consider, legal council is not socialized...
Consider that without the social contract of the state, a cop is just some person who is attempting to coerce me with a gun. A private court just means it's an organization (such as the mafia) doing the threatening.
yay slashdot socialism!
These started as entirely volunteer groups, and most today (in the US) are still volunteer groups, although tax supported (but not entirely funded) volunteer groups.
Don't think so. The Romans certainly had organized bucket brigades, but London got its first coordinated fire response when a load of insurance companies (note, that's *private* insurance companies) started selling fire insurance after the Great Fire in 1666. They would refuse to stop a fire in burning property that they hadn't insured, and that was marked as such with a visible plaque. If you happened to be a competitor insurance company and wanted to move into an area, it would be a night's work with a torch to bankrupt your competitors.
It does make more sense to keep certain services public, either because they are vital to the future of the country (a la education), or because the general public stands to get utterly screwed over by private investors (a la health care, fire services, etc)
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.
I just used the ownership example of administration of justice to point out that it is more than just police and courts. My point wasn't clear and I apologize.
As to the "costs" of rail being privatized in the UK, remember that public rail costs as much or more, it's just that everyone is subsidizing the ones who truly benefit from it.
The same is true about the heart transplant example: It still costs the same or more under socialism, but the costs are distributed to include the people who take care of themselves.
I have friends in the martial arts who had their Antique Japanese swords and antique firearms collections confiscated. I won't pretend to try understanding the benefit to society.
Obviously I have some strong opinions about centralized government, but my point regarding this article is that once the confiscated assets (tax dollars) are applied in the name of public good, then private interests lose their claim to exclusivity.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
If they'd been a bit more creative, the ACS would have realized that they have the inside track for developing PubChem. Instead of trying to get Congress to protect their monopoly, created in part with federal funds, they should be seeking federal grant funds to take their database public to make it part of PubChem.
Back in April, the ACS slammed the door shut for data mining with the CAS databases with a new set of license terms. These new conditions prohibit the use of CAS data with data mining tools.
Yeah. That must be why the american train system is so utterly awesome, while, say, the swiss publicly funded train system sucks so badly. Or maybe not.
Look at what happened in the UK when the state sold its train system to private parties. I think I made my point.
This is about forcing you to subscribe to a service which you probably have no personal interest in.
That's a local, maybe a state issue. The current issue is at the Federal level and... in that sense... you're right. The Federal Government should not have any position on or involvement with local libraries.
It's really a shame that private schools, offering better overall educations, have to compete for subsidy dollars on the playing field where all the qualifications have been written to include public schools by default.
Like trying to qualify for a subsidy written for blond people when you have black hair.
Read the Constitution. Read the 9th and 10th Amendments. The official duty of the Federal Government is clearly defined and delineated.
It's worthwhile to note that the acts of the very first Congress were to agree, more or less, that the 9th and 10th Amendments don't really apply to them. 200 years later the mess that created is easy to see. The 9th and 10th Amendments were written as the closing parts of the Bill of Rights for a very good reason. An entity like the Federal Government must be kept under lock and chain at all times because, if given carte blanche to do whatever it wants, it can always justify sucking your wallet dry for your own good.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Say you cut a person's head off and then want the right to display that head publicly in a store window. The ACS is saying,"You know... you really shouldn't have done that in the first place."
The ACS does have business motives here. No one's denying that. Their point is still valid, however. There's no reason why the Federal Government should have any hand in these arenas of scientific research. If it were strictly military related, where the Federal Government does have legitimate involvement, then they wouldn't be trying to make it publicly available anyway.
Should your neighbor be allowed to plant a garden in your front lawn just because you weren't using it? Of course not. It's still your front lawn. The government is trying to plant crops and profit from an arena which rightfully belongs to the American Chemical Society and other professional chemistry organizations and the companies and individuals who are in their membership ranks.
If we follow government's route, pretty soon everything will be under the jurisdiction of the Union of American Socialist States.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
This is fast becoming the Union of American Socialist States with your line of thinking. What interest do you have in "Acylphloroglucinol Derivatives from Mahurea palustris", or "Highly Stable Phenanthridinium Frameworks as a New Class of Tunable DNA Binding Agents with Cytotoxic Properties", or "Biomimetic Synthesis of Elysiapyrones A and B"?
Come on. This is not stuff that you should be forced to spend your tax money on.
Big Brother Brainwashing has become so prevalent and accepted that it's silly. To think that brainwashed people actually have the right to vote and their majority vote will dictate how my tax money is spent.
I love America... it's just the stupidity of its citizenry which drives me up a wall.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
Why then does the US has so much "Think of the children!" laws then?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Charities may or may not be created. They may or may not be effective. You will get more viruses and bacteria in your face when walking down the street if there is no local charity or it is underfunded.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
"What interest do you have in "Acylphloroglucinol Derivatives from Mahurea palustris", or "Highly Stable Phenanthridinium Frameworks as a New Class of Tunable DNA Binding Agents with Cytotoxic Properties", or "Biomimetic Synthesis of Elysiapyrones A and B"?"
Um, scientific?
"Come on. This is not stuff that you should be forced to spend your tax money on"
To be honest, it is. I do not have any interest in these scientific data except very marginal one, but these data can be used to improve our knowledge about the universe, allowing us to have a better living standard, benefitting every one of us, while if it were to be locked away as private property, you wouldn't need to pay for this with your taxes (it would go down the drain elsewhere probably but its another issue), but you wouldn't enjoy the (in my opinion much more substantial, but more long term) benefits neither. Do you remember the shitting-our-pants-from-sputnik education and research program that was booming in the usa in the 60s, early 70s (lets forget about the reasons it was initiated for a second)? How much effect did it have on our living standard in only about 30 years? Well, a lot, it is enough to mention only one word: transistor. That scientific research and data that was produced/made in that time probably wouldn't have been possible as a collaboration of private enterprises. We would be still messing with vacuum tubes if not that research and we would be probably not having this conversation on slashdot now. This is not a socialist world view, it is a view which strives to improve the living standards of every human, not only a corporation's board members.
For your information, i am not a citizen of the USA, nor do i want to be. I believe though, that the brainwashed people are those who are willing to let their freedom slip away inch by inch and who feel completely okay that corporations are working in a selfish way, which is effectively hinders the advancement of your nation. Corporations have their uses, but basic scientific advancement is not one of them.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Hello? GPL is exactly about getting others to contribute; code not money but the idea is the same. Just compare the popularity of the GPL with the popularity of the BSD License.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
There's a HUGE practical problem with the idea of completely privatized health care as espoused by Libertarian ideology. Long before Microsoft demonstrated the "network effect" with regard to software sales, public health researchers knew about it in regards to contagion: the more people around you that have access to health care, the less likely you are to get sick.
Public health (in this country, as in most other industrialized nations) was originally conceived of as the most efficient and effective method of maintaining a healthy workforce with the least total cost to the owning and managing classes.
(extra credit: what roles would be played by libertarians and/or free-market ideologues in this illustrative classic tale?)
Need a UNIX/Linux/network guru in the Boulde
My point was that, as the Libertarian thought goes, laws should be based on pure logic. I have no doubt that many /.ers (even non-Libertarians) would support the repeal of many of these "think of the children" laws, because they make no sense and are reactionary legislation made only for votes, and not because they are necessary.
"Think of the children" can be bad, logic however does not dictate that you should or shouldn't include humans in your thinking.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
The same is true about the heart transplant example: It still costs the same or more under socialism
No it doesn't. Under capitalism you have to pay for the profit margins of whoever has fronted the capital for the enterprise.
By this reckoning, Government should shut down police forces because we have private security firms we can all hire. ...or they should be prohibited from offering free municipal wireless services because there are existing ISPs that can charge to do it.
When did government begin existing at the behest of profiteers?
Government, AKA "the people", has a duty to compete with businesses which inadequately provide an important service. Especially when the people are subsidizing the service - because it's important to the people. The government competition not only can offer a better service, but will force the private competition to exceed the government's, to survive and profit.
There should clearly be constraints on government competition in markets. Entry must require government intervention, under an industrial policy with measurable goals, and published exit criteria. Government should be constrained from competing solely on price, abusing its bottomless pockets, unless there is a pricing crisis in the market. It probably should be required to charge only the median price, forcing that median price down for the same services. And it must deliver only the minimum required service. The entire point is for the people's minimum needs to be met, forcing private competition to increase the quality, or lower the cost, to an acceptable level, in an acceptable timeframe. If the private competitors can't do it, the people might have proven that the need can be served only by a "natural monopoly" (like sewers), and must rely on the government, controlled by the people, to serve as such.
Think of it as "Intelligent Design Evolution" in economic action.
--
make install -not war
Regarding the martial arts, that sounds more a case of overly bureaucratic nonsense than any real, intelligent government policy. This is clearly not the intention - (presumably) isolated cases like this show that people are interpreting the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
Distributed costs are beneficial to society as a whole. And "taking care" of yourself is only a small factor regarding diseases and illnesses - some may be genetic. I would argue that forcing people to pay for something they have no control over is unfair (and you could even say not libertarian).
Regarding the trains in the UK, it would probably cost less if it were nationalised and run properly. The company, Railtrack, which owns the railways has little accountability and little incentive to provide a decent service. The privatisation of the rail network in this country is widely recognised as a huge disaster. Other privatisations have been successful, like British Airways, but the rail network (maybe due to the fact that rail tracks are a natural monopoly) was a huge screw up.
Chris
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
However, that is no argument for locking up publicly funded data. Either the public should not be paying for it, or the data should remain public. This is no different than the current bill to lock up taxpayer funded weather data, so that Accuweather doesn't have to compete with free.
I've argued for some time now that it would be much better to simply have companies on the public teat bill citizens directly. You know, $2.67 for the tobacco farmer in KT, $21 for the odd oil company, $.46 for the idiots who build houses on flood plains, etc. Cut out the middleman, and make it apparent who is being payed here. Never fly, of course.
I forget what 8 was for.
Do yourself, and your fellow citizens, a favor. Take your extra money and donate it philanthropically to a university or a research organization of your choice. DO NOT campaign to saddle your fellow taxpayers with your idea of "well, it might help me in some way some day". Your neighbor may not have the extra cash to invest in such high-stakes gambles.
The government is NOTHING but a middle-man. The increase overhead cost and decrease the quality of the research. The sooner you face that reality and start doing your own research and making your own private contributions, the better off you and everyone will be.
If you rely on government to do this for you then your only rationale is being lazy.
fast as fast can be. you'll never catch me.
When are we going to come up with a term to replace "Source"? Open source only works if there is "Source" involved. As in "Source Code".
How about just saying "Open" leave "Source" off.
Actually, US passenger service sucks big time. It is now a "government service" and has been going downhill ever since. Passenger service was getting in the way of freight and wasn't so profitable, and one of the biggest scams in US rail was selling the passenger service to the public as a government service.
Freight rail, on the other hand, is doing very well in this country, but I don't expect much in the way of technological improvement unless the government comes up with some money. It's not that the railroads couldn't reinvest and make the improvements themselves, but they've been sucking up government money for 150 years and old habits are hard to break (not to mention harder on the profit margin.) The worst part, is that people who want to make the railroads better are hampered by government red tape.
The weapons I spoke of were confiscated back about 1989 or so...There was a lot of bitternes on the part of collectors at that time, and my friends were definitely not the only ones.
We've gotten far afield from the original topic, but the same principles apply: When government meddles in business there are costs. Some of those costs are monetary costs and some are costs against freedoms. IMO, the chemical researchers should either share their knowledge or not ask the public for money.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
If the government wasn't taking 50% of your money to do these "free" "public" things then you might be able to invest in these paid services.
Where it breaks down is also giving these paid services artificial monopolies created by the government.
The private sector can do things cheaper than the public sector provided that they are not given a false monopoly-- if they are then they become much more expensive than the government.
So the real problem is 150 year copyrights and patents that businesses are pushing for. If the patents and copyrights were reduced to 10-15 years, then we get the best of both worlds. The molecules (and other information) are discovered faster and cheaper.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
They would if they wanted that private-FDA logo on their product.
I'm sure road companies could come up with a system that works... After all, phone and internet services are mostly privatised and they don't have much of a problem.
There are no mandated standards for the internet, yet people still use them. Sure there are exceptions, but when such exceptions affect the user, such exceptions are usually abandoned.
You whine to the bank. They whine to the FBI.
The thought that the current government acts with our well-being in mind over their power is just as ludicrous. Look at the US government... they pass unjust crap like the Patriot Act and Copyright Law and they somehow get away with it.
The people choosing food so low quality that it is deadly also die out, leaving only those who are smart enough to eat healthy.
And 'we' didn't really elect the government. Idiots who don't even consider these topics we are debating about did.
Luke-Jr
As far as I'm concerned, when it's government funded research, the whole population of the country paid for it. They should have access to what was already paid for... their own money should not be used for the sole profit of one publisher. That is wrong, wrong, wrong wrong wrong. We should actually probably start a whole lot of distributed databases. I don't know anything about such things, but I'm pretty sure gomething has to exist where a database might be distributed. I guess Freenet works in a similar way where the "database" is the website. I'm going to let more knowledgeable people comment on that, as I'm really not up to speed. I guess I was really annoyed at how some private interests think they should be the only ones making money out of the pockets of those who already paid for the research (and are likely to have governments cave in, after a bit of lubrication of the right people in the right places). I call them thieves. No other term will do.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Wow. I just used pubchem last week, and I use it often, for doing work at my school. How can they take away something like this? All that would do is limit my learning, and my classmates learning. And we wouldn't pay for this stuff, it's expected to be free. Anyway, I can generate most of this stuff for free with all the chemistry gunk I have on my school linux cluster. How is their arguement valid?! This is like taking away an open source operating system like linux, because it has the possibility of interfering with Microsoft's business? Absolutely wacko.
It amuses me the way idealogues can always find an ad hoc reason why their theory doesn't work when evidence is presented. Hegelians and Marxists were particularly good at this (cf. "The Enemies of the Open Society" by Karl Popper).
Of course, if you want to go further back you could always look at the defenders of the Phlostigen theory.
It used to be that government research became public domain. But now, the researcher gets to keep material private and what is given to the government is only for the government's use.
Private, for-profit comapnies have an awful lot of overhead the government does not - executive salaries that dwarf everything in the public sector, and an obligation to provide ever-increasing profits to their shareholders.
Governments have bureaucracies that create inefficiency. So do companies of that size (I'm a former IBMer - trying to buy things out of the Purchasing catalog was enlightening).
Governments have corruption, and so do private companies. (How many companies buy stuff from suppliers run by executives' nephews?)
Governments sponsor many projects that turn out to be huge wastes of money. We know about them because of open-government laws. Companies also throw away lots of money on useless projects (how many /.ers have seen their employers spend gazillions of dollars on enterprise software that doesn't work?) We don't know about those unless we're involved (the company is under no obligation to disclose the boondoggle).
The problem, as you bring up, is that not everything is profitable, and even fewer things are profitable when done in a socially beneficial way. Private business can't do anything that's not profitable (in the long term at least).
Actually they DECREASE the overhead and INCREASE the quality of research.
I am not qualified to examine medical, biological, physics, or mathematicl research and their oddsof paying off. I don't have the background, the knowledge, or the time to go over proposals. The government hires those who do have the knowledge to do so. THus funneling money into those projects with the best chance of success. By introducing dozens of intermediaries as you would have it, we'd be paying dozens of beauracracies to do the same thing. This would be a net loss to the researchers.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
NCBI, the suborganization of NIH that hosts pubChem, has the goal of offering comprehensive biomedical research databases. Primarily this is protein/DNA sequences as well as structures and links to literature. But proteins interact with small molecules ('chemicals'), and every living organism contains hundreds of thousands of these different molecules (see metabolomics). PubChem provides information about these molecules in the context of biomedical research. So we see PubChem is essential for NCBI's objective.
That has to the worst analogy ever. Are you seriously comparing government funding of research to cutting people's heads off? Besides the over-the-top nature of your example, the basic point is flawed because the ACS most certainly does NOT oppose government funding of research. ACS Journals are also a large revenue stream for the ACS, and most of the content comes from universities and national labs, paid for mostly by government funding.
ACS have an open letter on their site http://www.acs.org/ for anyone interested in getting the whole story.
Bottom line, ACS is trying to protect their investment and jobs regarding CAS.
If your not a chemist or familiar with this data base; at issue is NIH (which is a government granting agency) creating a tool that would compete (for free) with fee for service tool that creates jobs for 1300 people (ACS statistics.)
Can't blame people for being worried about that; they see it as unfair competition.
I'm an ACS member, and I can see both sides of this. If my job were on the line, I would not be happy. However, small startups will benefit with lower R&D costs.
One more thing for all of the "screw the corporation" posters; Pubchem will provide free database access to the entire viewing world thanks to your US tax dollars, costing up to 1300 US jobs in the process (probably.)
Just so you know.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Rhetorical fallacy detected: "Ad hominum" rebuttal. No value to discussion, therefore. Apologies tendered on behalf of all intelligent life to the intended target of "ad hominum" attack.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
I find it somewhat difficult to believe that you have been a professional chemist for many years without ever having been impacted by the ACS. The ACS publishes virtually every major chemistry journal in the United States and maintains the CAS and SciFinder databases. If you have worked as a chemist "for many years" without ever publishing a journal article in an ACS journal, reading an article in an ACS journal, or looking something up in CAS or SciFinder, I have to wonder what you've been doing. You certainly couldn't have been doing research.
It's the same argument that is being used to attempt to shut down the FAA's free weather services.
So if I start my own fire brigade I should demand that publicly funded fire fighing be outlawed?
You're making a fool of yourself. This isn't about fighting fires, saving lives, or preventing destruction of property.
Health care is about saving lives, and yet the US seems to accept that run as a private enterprise, no?
Libraries should be closed since booksellers are missing out on sales?
That's a local, maybe a state issue. The current issue is at the Federal level and... in that sense... you're right. The Federal Government should not have any position on or involvement with local libraries.
But should they even be _allowed_? They are competing with private enterprise, just like this molecule database, and so should not be allowed to exist, no?
Private schols certainly have a distorted market with public schools being provided.
It's really a shame that private schools, offering better overall educations, have to compete for subsidy dollars on the playing field where all the qualifications have been written to include public schools by default.
Again, are you looking for a level playing field where private alternatives can exist with public offering (which is the case now with the molecule databese), or are you looking for public schools to be outlawed?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Wrong. Just because 51% of 51% of people decide to fund a project doesn't mean that the other ~74% should be forced to fund as well. Just as well, if 90% of people wanted this, that doesn't mean the other 10% should be forced to fund as well. Government is in place to maintain the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness by protecting the abuses of other people. When it starts stepping in and becoming the abuser on behalf of the people, it's no longer a fit government. Hell, if 50% of people really want to fund research, they're obviously free to do it themselves. But there's nothing moral about forcing the other 50% to contribute.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
1. John Locke's philosophical ideas aren't fundamentally logical. Why is man innately dignified? Why are all men "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"? There's no proof for this thought; it's a pure emotional appeal, made with persuasive rhetoric.
2. American political dialogue, today, is among the most unintellectual in the world. You have senators who quote from Star Wars; politicians can play the national security card to trump all other concerns; your anarchic leftists blame everything on corporations and attribute anything and everything to "American imperialism". Even your political commentators, like Joe Klein, are populists, whining that Democrats and Republicans aren't putting aside their "partisanship" to appeal to some apparently nonpartisan notion of "common sense". Most countries do, of course, have their fair share of demagoguery. My point is merely that yours has more, not less, than the average.
3. Libertarianism is an undeveloped, incomplete and yes, naïve political ideology. It's very nice to claim that American political thought is based on reasoning, but if the reasoning is so generalized that it rides roughshod over specificity and practicality the way libertarianism does, then you'd be better off just with your popularism. At least your popularism doesn't claim universality.
4. There's nothing wrong with appealing to a sense of social justice and compassion. After all, there was no pragmatic reason for the Allied Powers to stop the Armenian Genocide, so they didn't. That's rather regarded to have been wrong, now; lassez faire politics are rarely looked back on as having produced the humane result. Though universal health care has plenty of pragmatic arguments in favour of it, I support it because I believe in the right of all men to be healed. The document with those other "certain unalienable Rights" is equally a work of principle, not logic, and on that basis I strongly admire it.
In most circumstances, a private company is less wasteful. This is because most companies are not monopolies. You're right that executive salaries often are massive, but knowing that opens an opportunity for new companies to form and to advertise these lower prices. The same can be said for private companies who always by from some management's nephews. This all ties into anonymity. While certainly the company is under no obligation to inform everyone about their fuck-ups, there should be no legal punishment (ie, censorship) to release such information. And anonymity is important so that people feel free to voice the corruption without fear of losing their job. Of course, while not just sell that information to a competitor or form your own company? The risk might be great, but so long as government isn't involved all that waste can turn into higher employee salaries to lure away the host company's employees while still being cheaper than them. Then it's just a matter of informing the consumer of these facts. :)
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Rebuttal to Rebuttal #1:
I passonately hate the myth of charity. It doesn't work. How do I know this?
1) There are people that aren't being helped
2) People (especially the rich) are greedy bastards, how do I know this? According to a report that ran on NPR a few months back, the middle class give 6 times as much to charity per dollar of income than the rich.
People are giving enough + People not getting enought == Charity does not work.
With taxes those rich bastards are forced to pay their fair share regradless of if they want to or not.
A Free Market requires informed intelligent consumers, such people are rare, we're in trouble.
1) There are people that aren't being helped
That's bogus. One could easily make the reverse claim - government social programs don't work because today there are people that aren't being helped. Sounds like a myth of government social programs to me.
2) People (especially the rich) are greedy bastards, how do I know this? According to a report that ran on NPR a few months back, the middle class give 6 times as much to charity per dollar of income than the rich.
Prepare yourself for some cognitive dissonace. Those numbers you heard were misleading. They leave out all households that give nothing to charity. They also had very sparse sampling of upper income households.
When the entire population is accounted for, you find that higher levels of giving (as a percentage of disposable income) are correlated with higher levels of income.
Charitable Giving: How Much, By Whom, To What, and Why."
With taxes those rich bastards are forced to pay their fair share regradless of if they want to or not
Assuming your were right about them not giving more already, just what about the last two centuries leads you to believe that the "rich bastards" won't just have the politicians (whom are universally members of the rich bastard's club) write enough loopholes into the law so that they legally don't have to "pay their fair share" anyway?
Why bother with all the overhead of taxation if the people who most "deserve" to be taxed will just weasle out while everyone else is left with an oppresive burden?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If I may, you've a slight misunderstanding of anarchist theories. The underlying question behind them is this, more or less: On what grounds should a group mandate conformity? Best I know, there are no rational grounds.
Very clever, props to you. However, has any implementation of communism not included authoritarism? (I'd consider most of Europe and Canada socialist, and I'm pretty sure they're not killing people for some tyrant's 5 year plan or such.)
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The approach I take is that some private property is unwarranted and that most taxation is unwarranted. What one produces or procures through labor should be theirs to keep. The opportunities and resources one monopolizes, due to a shady government grant or equally shady notion of original appropriation, require the acceptance of and remuneration to society. Some taxes are theft, other taxes are theft's prevention.
Geolibertarian... the better libertarian.
The Supreme Court disagrees with your analysis regarding police protection. See DESHANEY v. WINNEBAGO CTY. SOC. SERVS. DEPT., 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
I like the way you think, though!
-Peter
So you're thesis is that some lawyer, able to lawyer his way all the way to the supreme court was too fucking stupid to pick a better argument?
In any case, under what law does the state have such a duty, in A.C. Esq.'s esteemed legal opinion?
Of course, since you posted this anonymously I have no way of knowing if the same AC replies. *sigh*
-Peter
Your. I was typing too fast.
-Peter