Slashdot Mirror
Why Isn't the US Government Funding Research?
thesandbender writes "The recent post about GM opening its own battery research facility led me to wonder why the US government is pouring billions into buying companies instead of heavily funding useful research. You can give $10 billion to a company to squander or you can invest $10 billion into a battery research and just give the findings to the whole of the US industry for free. From a historical standpoint, the US government has little experience with commercial enterprise ... but has an amazing record for driving innovation. The Manhattan Project and the Apollo moon missions are two of the pinnacles of 20th century scientific achievement, yet it seems to me that this drive died in the '70s and that's when the US started its slow decline. To be true to the 'Ask Slashdot' theme, what practical research do you think the US government should embark upon to get the most return for its citizens and the world?"
The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Moon missions are two of the pinnacles of the 20th century scientific achievement
So, extrapolating from those two points, we just need a big, old-fashioned war. (hot or cold, as desired)
... and that's when the C.H.U.D.'s came at me.
Raw research properly conducted on unexplored issues always discovers something. Either the experiment worked or it did not, and either way, something was learned. It always pays dividends - if not in new products and methods, in the avoidance of the repetition of failed experiments. This doesn't help the profits of the corporations that fund the election of political tools. That's progress. Progress is not the government's goal. The purposes of government are to ensure its persistence and toward that goal to deplete the surplus productivity so as to eliminate a surfeit of leisure. An excess of leisure is an invitation to insurrection.
TFS is correct that the US government forgot these things for a while, but they've remembered them since.
But... to answer the question: the big and the small. The fast and the slow. The literal, the virtual and the speculative. Most importantly, how to get offsite backup on the human genome. If we don't do that then nothing else matters.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
How is getting some public governmental research entity started going to be remotely cost effective and efficient
Of course you're right. Government research is always so wasteful and inefficient. Remember that DARPAnet thing? What a dumb idea! Fortunately, it sank like every inefficient government research program inevtably will, and we can now discuss the glories of the Invisible Hand here on free-market forums such as Compuserve, Prodigy, and GEnie.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The National Institutes of Health annual budget: $29 billion. That money funds most of the university biomedical research in the US http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm Current NIH funded projects include among other things the human genome, the human microbiome, almost all cancer research in the US, obesity, diabetes, communicable diseases.. The National Science Foundation has an extramural grant budget of $6 billion. The Department of Energy has an extramural research grant budget of $24 billion Among other things they fund alternative energy research, genomic research, You might say the US federal government should be funding more, but you cannot say it is not funding anything at all. The space race and the Manhattan project were both driven by wars: WWII and the Cold War. Maybe that is what it takes for a government to fund major research: fear of losing power and primacy to an opponent.
Lobbyists and insurance companies are what got us into this mess.
Doctors and medical establishments learned that they had insurance companies by the balls at one point. Approved procedure could cost whatever they wanted, and insurance would pay it. Then they got all butthurt because real people couldn't afford to pay that much at all. Then insurance companies got revenge when everyone decided that doctors were a blank check in terms of lawsuit money. Insurance companies then offered insurance against lawsuits to the doctors, for a very high price.
So now what we have is a system where it costs two weeks worth of pay for the average American to get a single fucking X-ray that department stores were doing for free in the 60s. Of course I expect the expert opinion of the doctor to cost some money, but its ridiculous. And one of the reasons is because of this never ending war between doctors, lawsuits, and insurance companies.
I say we research some way to break the cycle. Like maybe making doctors and medical establishments explain why that aspirin costs a patient $100, when the entire bottle of 500 costs them 5% of that if they were to buy it themselves at a wholesale pharmacy.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
End of transmission...
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
I blame the baby-boomers, they were raised on idea of continual gain of benefits. Whether it was from capitalism, increased government benefits, or lower taxes. They continually have driven everything out of total self interest an screw society.
You say I am crazy? It was not my generation that,
I may be generalizing about baby boomers as a whole, but the leadership from my generation has not become CEOs, congressmen or senators, the baby boomers have.
It was the 80's. reagan and the neo-cons PURPOSELY cut the RD in science that we had back then. MASSIVE CUTS. The idea was that the large number of RD labs that we had would do the work. Bell Labs, Watson Labs, Ge Labs and nearly all major labs were killed, cut, or moved to other nations. Basically, the RD labs that we had were tied to the gov's huge budgets as well as our education, which was THE TOPS. Now, they are simply moved elsewhere and we have been witness to the largest 30 year dismantling of one of the few historical superpower nations.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There is surely a market for long lasting batteries, and as in the case of GM, companies have been investing heavily in new technologies. How is getting some public governmental research entity started going to be remotely cost effective and efficient, because we all know that government departments are the model of efficiency?
You've answered your own question. For profit corporations are not good research vehicles, because they are too efficient at raising profits. This means they will efficiently allocate resources to researching technology with obvious (near) immediate commercial returns. So yes, you'll get research on longer lasting batteries (if only so that they can be patented and kept off the market as long as possible), and GM, etc. However the areas of science which might be today's equivalent to the physics of electricity or of genetics will not be discovered by this kind of effcient R&D.
Corporate research is excellent at delivering technological improvements, less so at fostering scientific innovation.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
In basic, the "Guvmint" exists to keep us safe and provide basic infrastructure. I would add in water, police, firemen... Oh, and the EPA, FDA, etc. we need those kinds of watchdog agencies.
Does the government own GM now? ... No. No it does not. It's just a big shareholder.
You seem to place great store in the ability of the "market" to innovate. You bash the government for being inefficient. Have you ever worked for a large company? Man.... Trust me, the government doesn't have a monopoly on being stupid and slow.
And so freaking what if government did open source a battery and undermined a companies research dollars? Really... so what? Who gave companies some kind of right? No one is guaranteed the right to profit.
I'm rather tired of this magic land where companies would do what's best for all of us due to the power of the "free market". You know what? The first thing most successful and large companies do is strangle the free market to death so they can retard innovation and competition. It's happened over and over again in pretty much every single industry I can think of. Don't go crying Commie on me... I love the theory of capitalism. It turns human greed into technological progress. It's awesome... but there has to be limits and consequences to the behaviour of large companies. And man, they do NOT need any protections!
Think of this... Big business pays almost no taxes. They create something, sometimes with government subsidies or loans. They sell it to us at a profit. Then they dump their waste into the public rivers. We pay for them to make stuff. We pay to get the stuff. Then we pay to clean up the waste from the process. W.T.F!
Oops... calm down... no ranting... It's ok..... Phew!
I love it when the government does research and puts the results out there. Everyone benefits and we all pay so very little for such a big gain. That's the magic of government. It doesn't have to be driven by the almighty Profit. It can do the right thing at a loss, just because it needs to be done. We all benefit, and our slice of the payment is so very tiny.
People whine about the inefficiency of the government, then they drive on the roads, enjoy the protections of police and firemen, use the public school systems, buy homes that aren't death traps thanks to building codes, reap the benefits of cheap shipping due to interstate highways..... etc etc etc.
ah, ah... calm... yes....
For my two cents, I would love to see the government do basic research in:
batteries and capacitors. We need this very badly.
infrastructure... build high speed rails so we can ship a house across the country for a nickel.
Power savings... Why isn't there an open source home design for builders to use? Seriously, something so simple....
I could go on, but those would be a nice start.
-Tony
led me to wonder why the US government is pouring billions into buying companies instead of heavily funding useful research. You can give $10 billion to a company to squander or you can invest $10 billion into a battery research and just give the findings to the whole of the US industry for free.
Because the immediate problem is the recession.
GM can't build an electric car if the company goes into liquidation. GM can't sell an electric car if its dealers go into liquidation.
Mechanics can't service an electric car if they go bankrupt with their suppliers.
Infrastructure once damaged is very difficult and expensive to rebuild.
You have to stop the bleeding first.
Research isn't a panacea.
It would be easy to aquander $10 billion on projects that have no realistic prospect of success within a reasonable time frame.
The geek isn't an unbiased observer here.
It should be obvious that a very generous cut of that $10 billion he wants the government to spend will be headed his way - and not to the auto worker on the line in Detroit.
Frankly ,looking over the constitutional powers allotted to the federal government they have no f**king business buying businesses, funding research, baling businesses out, or a large host of other "responsibilities" they have taken on illegally. They're supposed to protect our borders and manage to screw that up. Run a post office, they do a lousy job of that. Supposed to regulate interstate commerce which they interpret to mean "involve themselves in anything they want to" rather than just making sure trade amongst the several states is fair. They are supposed to collect tariffs on imports rather than tax the citizenry. They seem to screw up just about everything. What's worse is the population of complete morons who continually vote for Democrats and/or Republicans and expect things to change for the better rather than staying the same. Even worse the population is made up of liberal sissy wymynists who would rather cower than do anything about it.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Private companies don't do basic research because basic research might or might not be profitable and if it might be profitable, then only in very long term. Private companies don't think in long term.
Also, stop bullshitting yourself in thinking that free market puts research dollars where they will be most beneficial. Free market researches everything what might bring a short term profit. It doesn't have to be beneficial at all and often it isn't.
Putting research dollars where they will buy the most votes, on the other hand, is doing research on what the public wants. And in many cases the public wants beneficial things.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
All Hail and Worship the Invisible Hand!
A lot of people just don't get it.
Governments are not inherently less efficient than corporations. Just go look at various private companies (big and small) they're not all lean mean super efficient entities. Far from it.
And it's not a matter of size. It's a matter of quality.
You can have good or bad quality government (whether big or small).
There have been a number of people who decided to make the sacrifice and go into civil service/government to try to make things better, rather than make themselves richer in $$$$ terms.
Maybe nowadays there are too few people willing to do that.
And guess what, the Invisible Hand only does what the people want to do.
If only the bad guys want to be politicians, the voters will have to pick the least crappy.
If the voters keep voting for more crappy instead of less crappy, it doesn't help...
If only the lazy inefficient people want to work in the civil service, that doesn't help either.
It's like all the cells in your body doing all that hard work just for your body to not fall apart overnight. A poor good:bad cell ratio, and the body falls apart sooner.
I read an interesting opinion piece the other day, it said that American government is inefficient because Americans expect it to be inefficient. It lives up to our expectations. What competent person wants to be a civil servant when they expect that it will be a waste of their time and effort? Why would they do that when people are just going to complain about them, no matter WHAT they do? If you're going to go through all that pain, you might as well work for yourself. On the other hand, government social nets in some places work out pretty well. Check out flexicurity in Denmark, it's pretty cool.
The purpose of government is to execute the collective will of society. We as a people decided to get together and made a contract to create this organization to take care of certain things for us. If the collective will is only to pave roads and protect the borders, then that's what it will result in. If the collective will includes things like, making sure people don't starve to death in the streets or die of easily curable diseases, then that's what will happen. As it is, most people in the US are interested in some sort of health care system, which is why all the major candidates had a health plan. If the will of the people includes funding science or landing on the moon, or enslaving blacks, then it tends to happen, for better or for worse.
Agreed on the Camaro.
Qxe4
Actually, it goes a little deeper then insurance companies.
Medicare and medicaid pays based on an average costs of the approved treatments in the area. That places the hospitals interest into driving up those costs in order to get as much guaranteed money they can. Insurance companies negotiate based around the same standards and generally attempt to get lower prices but the prices are increased then discounted. This is why insurance pays different for in network and out of network access.
Sure, Insurance is part of the problem but government payments started it and still fuel it. The $100 dollar aspirin is an exaggeration but I know of hospitals charging $40 for one because a nurse has to give it to you and ask the doctor if it's ok first (yea, that's not covered in the already overpriced room and board). But when the government started paying like that, it more or less became a free ride because the more they can jump the averages, the more the government pays. I know a guy with no insurance and basically no way to pay- who broke his ankle and had to get pins placed in. The surgery was considered emergency and billed out at over 15k but they magically reduced the costs to around 2K if he agreed to make payments and kept current with them. I'm sure they didn't operate at a capitol loss by doing that, it probably more accurately reflect the real costs of the surgery even though they might not have pocketed as much profit.
If you're only counting two Wars, then you haven't really been paying attention.
Wars on abstract concepts don't count.
They do when the money we're spending isn't abstract.
You also must take into account if companies will profit from said research. In the early 90s, scientests made significant headway in finding a cure for type 1 diabetes. But what pharmaceutical company trying to make money is going to pay for a cure to be found, thus enough funding was not put forth. It doesn't make sense ($$) for them to sell a drug to a person once, when they could be selling them drugs for an entire lifetime.