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The Billionaires Privatizing American Science
An anonymous reader writes "Government-funded science is struggling in the United States. With the unstable economy over the past decade and the growing hostility to science in popular rhetoric, basic research money is getting hard to find. Part of the gap is being filled by billionaire philanthropists. Steven Edwards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science says, 'For better or worse, the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.' Vast amounts of research are now driven by names like Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, David Koch, and Eric Schmidt. While this helps in some ways, it can hurt in others. 'Many of the patrons, they say, are ignoring basic research — the kind that investigates the riddles of nature and has produced centuries of breakthroughs, even whole industries — for a jumble of popular, feel-good fields like environmental studies and space exploration. ... Fundamentally at stake, the critics say, is the social contract that cultivates science for the common good.'"
The free market knows best.
What could possibly go wrong? They'll "prove" that fracking doesn't pollute groundwater, nuclear plants and their waste products are safe and global warming is a myth. Oh yeah, the Earth is 6,000 years old and Intelligent Design is science. We, our children and our grandchildren will all profit from this!
Billionaires tend to be far more critical of what their money finances than government granting authorities. Consider all of the scandals involving made up data. A billionaire who funded that might get it checked out before allowing it to be published. A government agency won't. A billionaire who discovers shenanigans certainly won't fund that researcher again, a government agency probably will.
Now I know a lot of that is driven by "publish or perish" but it's pretty obvious that private donors are more likely to scrutinize than public sector donors. If that weren't the case, the various public funding agencies would be bringing the fraudulent researchers up on criminal charges for defrauding the tax payer.
But in reality, this should be welcomed. This is how science got funded during its first centuries as a discipline when many of the giants of science did their work. Billionaires have the luxury of blowing their money however they see fit. All a researcher who thinks a field might prove promising has to do is make a case to the man with the money. There's no public interest involved, just his personal interest. That means no red tape, no government oversight, etc.
There, I said it. Lets all now have a rational, civilized discussion.
I've long felt that the only value of guys is to make gals look good.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
There is a lot of trouble with science. Scientists cutting corners and cheating. Retracting papers from journals is happening more frequently than ever before. Many papers are not reproducible and important descriptions of procedures or original data sets are never published. Affording all the necessary papers is difficult. Referees do not reject papers that have serious defects. Scientists pay to have themselves added as authors but make no contribution to the projects.
Poe.
Son, we live in a world that has a permanent political class, and that PPC has to be guarded by votes. Who's gonna do it? You? You, AC? The PPC has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for basic research, and you curse the skeptics. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That basic research's death, while tragic, probably saved votes. And the PPC's existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, requires votes. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want the PPC in charge, you need the PPC in charge. We use words like procedure, program, process. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending the PPC. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very "managed" freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you bundle some campaign funds, and bring in some votes. Either way, I don't give a damn what research you think the public should support.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
What if the Billionaire WANTS a certain answer and lets the scientist know it, so that the "data" can be published for a huge return on investment for the billionaire? Tobacco industry did this.
Or maybe billionaire just has an answer he emotionally wants to hear and funds science to get that instead of sensible science? If Jenny McCarthy had billions what sort of research d'you think she might fund?
Or what if billionaire wants research on life extending treatments for him and him alone and screw publishing?
I don't see any compelling reason billionare science would be any better than publicly funded science. I'd rather everyone own the results, too, than a billionaire.
I mean, one thing a billionare is VERY good at is hoarding good things (money) for themselves AREN'T THEY.
--PeterM
Given the many trillions of dollars committed to Social Security / Medicare, and the amazing ability of baby boomers to get their way politically, it seems pretty obvious that everything that isn't Social Security, Medicare better be prepared to go private.
This seems to be a return to some very old models of research- think Aristotle, Leonardo Da Vinci, where research was not government supported, but either the hobby of the very rich, or the very rich paying someone. I suppose that it could be considered as government supported, as the very rich *were* the government. The institutional government supporting research appears to be a 19th or 20th century change, and that is dominated by military motives.
The super rich have more money than they could possibly spend- why not let them spend that money in the way that they want? Be it driven by guilt or by the desire to make more money... I'd much rather them spend the money on science as opposed to spending their money on becoming part of the government (think Mitt Romney and Michael Bloomberg in the US and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy).
Private funding is great in many areas. This is particularly true of science that addresses problems that society needs to solve (e.g. medicine) or that captures people's imaginations (e.g. astronomy).
However, there is a lot of science that needs to be done that doesn't fit into either category. That is where governments need to step in.
Call it a minimum requirement. If nuclear plants run on 1960s tech they will not be safe. Fukushima complied with the safety requirements of the day.
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
A billionaire who funded that might get it checked out before allowing it to be published.
Excuse me Docotr, but your results shows my business in a bad light. I am sure when you re-examine that data, the results will be much more conducive to my business.
The cigarette industry sure as hell did that.
The petroleum and gas industry sure as hell does that.
Every industry that sponsors their own research never allows negative results to be published.
AND there have been quite a bit of publication bias in the pharmaceutical industry (actually the whole of medical). That's why their studies of their drugs show them to be more effective than they really are - like many of the newer anti-depressants.
It really was not until the Manhattan project and post WWII cold war that government became the patron of scientists. Was Diract writing grant requests? Bohr? Heisenberg? Shockley (et al)?
This is a really encouraging sign and should be looked upon favorably even if it is not prefect. Philanthropists have been on the sidelines for a long time now and it will be a learning process for all involved on how to best utilize funding.
I don't think so. Basic scientific research has been privately funded for most of those centuries. Government funding is a relatively recent change.
Human space exploration is an ideal field for private research. There is now a body of billionaires with a geeky interest in what is out there. When you consider that any new initiative, such as a lunar base or a Mars expedition, will require assuming great personal risk, there is no Western government that would run the political risk of subjecting astronauts to a high probability of death far from Earth. Remember those long periods of space shutdown after each Shuttle accident?
Another rich field is energy research. If LFTR or thorium reactors are ever going to get built, it will be by billionaires working at offshore sites not reachable by protesters.
The poster asserts, "Government-funded science is struggling in the United States."
The Federal Government spends more than $130 billion on research and development (R&D) each year, conducted primarily at universities and Federal laboratories.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog...
How much should the taxpayers spend on research? Show your work.
The problem is we don't actually know what is and isn't a waste.
A lot of very useful science started out as just some researchers pie in the sky distraction. For instance, much of the work in number theory and pure mathematics of the past few hundred years had no clear use. In Hilberts autobiography, "Apology of a Mathematician" he apologized for spending his life playing with puzzles that he thought were fun.
However, actually number theory (especially now that we have computers) actually turned out to be QUITE useful.
The problem is you don't know what will or won't be useful ex-ante. There are certainly benefits to saying "we should find a cure for _____" However, perhaps some microbiologist who just wanted to see what he could grow if he tried culturing a geyser will discover something revolutionary. (Really happened. Modern microbiology relies on replicating DNA which uses a mechanism found in a bacteria that figured out how to live in a geyser).
Really we need a mix. If a billionaire likes the idea of going into space, we should welcome him to try. However, we should still support pure research because of the probably effects on society.
Yes, because "feel-good" fields like space exploration have never produced anything for the common good.
We have slowing been destroying what it means to be a civic society for a long time. Not many people meet in the park these days to discuss ideas (or gossip) on Sunday afternoons.
And remember when Reagan said that "government is the problem". And all of those names on buildings at your local university? Someone's name on a building helps insure the university does that person's bidding.
So I have an idea.... why don't we stop giving our money to rich assholes or corrupt government assholes, and since neither will serve your interests, save your money. You will need it.
What this boils down to is we as a nation have decided that the government has very little role to play in our lives and we would rather have private enterprise run the show. With corrupt politicians this has become a self fulfilling prophecy. We used to own the government. Now private enterprise does. Watch as the US Postal Service is delivered to the hands of private enterprise in the next 10 years.
I'll leave it to you as an exercise to compare the amounts of private funding that went to astronomy vs. "economics" (paid-for publications and think-tanks included). Why would that have happened?
....the employees have control over the peoples funding of government. and That is inherent Corruption incentive.
How are the so called representatives to represent the people in this republic when they have no way of knowing what the people want?
The "No Vote" won the last election by far, worse qualified voter turnout % since before 1948 if not of all time. But Taxpayers still fund government, and this doesn't change..
What is missing is the paperwork allowing the taxpayers to say how their taxes are to be used. This in turn sets the budget and communicates via the solid bottom line of money budgeted as to what the people want represented. Think Crowd funded government.
Tax processors allocate per each taxpayers instructions. Government has to be transparent with what they want funding for or they do not get it. Taxpayers are limited in what they can chose their taxes to be used for as it must be in matters of generating teamwork benefits shared by the citizens.
Voting is a limited democratic supplement to the Republic in deciding who gets the job of optimizing the peoples funding for teamwork benefits optimization. Voting is also used for influencing the pool of funds the taxpayers decide to let the government deciding on how used (funding buffer).
When the employees no longer have control over the peoples funding of government then the corrupt will no longer find they want to be in politics, as its no longer a free lunch to do whatever they want after lying to the people to get elected, but a JOB of fulfilling the intents of the people.
This happens no less than once a year as its part of the tax return paperwork and for each at the level of taxes paid, local, state, federal.
Its not a difficult thing to implement and can be eased in as taxpayers can decide on how much of their taxes they direct and how much they allow government to decide. So its not like a taxpayer has to take full responsibility but its clear in time as people become used to and confident in the decision of the people, the more they will take responsibility for.
If you do not trust the people to make the right choices then what? You rig elections?
How I know this will work is the example of Free Open Source Software works in a similar manner and if you don't know what all is available... then you are missing out by your corporate greed feeding. Feeding that can be better directed elsewhere.
Imagine the government system getting revised by the people once a year, to express what the people want, and how well this will tell the representatives what they are to represent.
The way things are today, the employees have control over the bank account, cannot set a budget and in their guilt and effort to dismiss it have been spending money spying on the very people funding them and passing laws against the same. This is no different than a spoiled bully brat addicted to killing.
Its not what the people are intent on funding. For the people would have to be self destructive to do so.
The correction is simple and fitting of the Republic the founders of this country founded.
Where is the required taxpayer voice paper work, and government funding request information to make it possible for representatives to know what they are to represent?
Copy this comments and send to your representatives and repost.... That would be a start!
Stopped reading at "son".
*Whoosh*
This seems to be a return to some very old models of research
Not entirely. Aristotle, Da Vinci etc were given leave to "explore". They were funded to do curiosity driven research as well as the "build a better widget" kind. Today's billionaires, very like governments, are focussed on getting better widgets rather than improving mankind's knowledge. The problem is that it can take 50-100 years before our new fundamental knowledge can be applied so by the time that they all wake up to find that applied science has slowed to a crawl it will be a long time before the damage can be undone.
I'm sure that this news may make a lot of slashdotters uncomfortable. But I ask you to think of the alternative. They could spend their billions influencing elections. How many attack ads can you buy for $75 billion?
Here's a challenge. How should billionaires spend their money?
I'm not asking for how you would spend the billions if it was yours, nor am I interested in your concept of social justice or what is beneficial for mankind. I'm challenging you to try to imagine the world from, the billionaire's view.
We've got tons of "basic research" which doesn't go anywhere. How often on this site do we hear about a new breakthrough in solar energy or batteries or cellulosic biofuel that ends up going nowhere? Perhaps we really do need more in the way of applied research and development; get one of these "breakthroughs" to actually do something.
And then there's physics, which in terms of basic research has spent decades trying to break the Standard Model with more and more powerful accelerators, and gotten zip for it; the Standard Model survives and we haven't gotten any useful applications for a very long time.
Private funding in medicine sucks. If the new drug you're testings turns out to not work well or produces some really bad side effects you can't sell it and all the money seems lost (you've learned something, but you can't sell or quantify that). So there's a lot of pressure to bury the facts and get your drugs to market as long as we'll make a profit before the lawsuits come in.
We shouldn't have privately funded medical research.
Actually, didn't come out that Fukushima actually cut a lot of corners over the years, so that by the time of the disaster they didn't even fully comply with the 1960's era safety regulations?
More and more I think the only way a nuclear plant can realistically escape from the creeping systemic rot of corner-cutting is to remove all the critical components from the reach of the operators - systems like sealed modular reactors that essentially act like a 5-20 year nuclear heat battery which can then be plugged into a power generating station until depleted, and then the whole system shipped back to the factory for retrofit and refueling. Hyperion power (or whatever they changed their name to) was actually claiming they could build such reactors for roughly the same price per thermal watt-hour as an equivalent amount of coal. Combined with financing so that you don't have to pay for 5-20 years of power up front that seems an extremely appealing option.
The factory has a far greater incentive to do proper maintenance because their income stream relies not on selling power to people who aren't paying attention, but on many different power companies having faith in and continuing to purchase their reactors. And the power plant operators are left maintaining basically the same tech as a coal-fired plant, with the addition of battery vaults whose purpose is primarily to keep disasters and saboteurs away from the batteries. It also makes upgrading to new tech much more cost effective - you (potentially) can simply start purchasing new-design modular reactors instead of refit ones when they need to be replaced. Meanwhile there will be no shortage of customers willing to continue purchasing refurbished old-style reactors for less affluent regions, but the reactor makers still have incentive to retire individual reactors completely before safety becomes an issue - because even a faulty old reactor will call into question the safety of their new ones.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
_A Mathematician's Apology_ was by G.H. Hardy, not Hilbert.
In the old days did not the kinds have Imperial Mathematicians, imperial astronomers, and what not?
The only thing new here is that we now know who the kings really are.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
funny, of course the norm for humans isn't leaders elected by votes. although leadeers in many systems have and are in the pockets of what we'd today call large corporations
The president doesn't spend money. Congress spends the money. Perhaps you should check your 'facts.'
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that at least a couple of Fukushima reactors are a *long* way away from being well contained,with the expectation being that they will continue spewing contaminated material into the environment for years, possibly decades, before they can actually be decommissioned.
I agree that freezing R&D into fission is probably the wrong reaction, but a bigger issue would seem to me to be changing the economic realities that make corner-cutting so lucrative and dangerous. One possible option is sealed modular reactors where maintenance is performed periodically during refueling and refurbishing by a company whose only income stream is from power-plant operators continuing to trust the safety of their fission "batteries". It also makes oversight easier since you only have a few construction/refurbishing plants maintaining the most critical components, instead of thousands of separate reactors scattered around the world.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
When the alternative is government funding, you're at the mercy of political winds and the loss of a patron in the next election.
Really? Patronage was the norm for a long time, but who were the patrons? Mostly the upper nobility who had money to burn - aka the government of the time. How often do you suppose the king kept separate treasuries for the nation and himself? Or the nobility, who were basically state or county governments. Sure, you had the merchant-princes as well whose empire was forged from trade routes rather than farmland, but basically those with money *were* the government.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Go to for example the mathematics stack of any decent university library and thumb through the beginning of books written around the era of the beginning of the Vietnam War. Do not be surprised to see many acknowledging support from the Office of Naval Research for topics such as algebraic topology. Post World War II the military was the best support basic science ever had in the United States. It was the left who deliberately tried to destroy this amazingly fruitful collaboration between the military and basic science with the Mansfield Amendment(s), deliberately taking away basic science's best patron and shunting off funding to a politically impotent National Science Foundation. Here for example is an actual bombing and killing of a scientist who wasn't even involved in the targeted research. If the right did such a thing today Hollywood would instantly make a major movie and the event would be seared into public consciousness by the media for decades. Instead we'll never hear a peep from the media about this senseless atrocity today. It's not growing hatred of science. It's the echo of the left's hatred of science dating back from the Vietnam War era.
Yes, I have no idea what I was thinking when I wrote down Hilbert.
Epic post. It took a few seconds to catch on, but awesome reuse and appropriation of the feel of that particular homily.
That you had someone moderate it without knowing what it was and have to post to remove moderation only increases the epicness.
Seems to me you're talking about SOCIALISM, or even worse, COMMUNISM.
I didn't sign no contract, and there ain't no such thing as society. That's a lie told by Karl Marx.
— All of America
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
They are buying. They buy results.
Statin meds come to mind.
Yes, we can pay zillions of monkeys and occasionally they write a Shakespeare's play. But that is not a way how to effectively spend public money.
The problem is we don't actually know what is and isn't a waste.
[...]
The problem is you don't know what will or won't be useful ex-ante.
But we aren't operating from a position of complete ignorance. We have a fairly good idea what things have near future value. I'm tired of the people who push this myth that science has incredible future value conveniently off the horizon which we can't even begin to determine.
If that were true, then there would be no distinction between funding thousands of US colleges and funding me the same amount of money. It's all Science and my parties (I'd bring a whole new meaning to the term "state-wide party") would be better. So why fund all those people when you can just fund one source?
The argument is just a shifty dodge of responsibility and accountability.
However, perhaps some microbiologist who just wanted to see what he could grow if he tried culturing a geyser will discover something revolutionary.
It actually was a hot spring, Mushroom Spring in Yellowstone National Park, not a geyser - though it is close to a large geyser.
"Actually, didn't come out that Fukushima actually cut a lot of corners over the years, so that by the time of the disaster they didn't even fully comply with the 1960's era safety regulations?"
Yes. For just one example, there was a "temporary" waste storage unit at the reactor that was designed to store spent rods and the like for only something like 60-90 days. But in fact they had been taking waste that was supposed to be sent elsewhere, and instead stockpiling it in that "temporary" storage, for years.
Sure it is, and even dictatorships acknowledge this. What is a cult of personality or state propaganda but an attempt to persuade people to vote for the current leader and system, either formally or with their feet? What is brutal oppression other than an attempt to secure votes through intimidation?
You can't rule without the consent of the ruled, and a formal voting mechanism is simply a means of establishing who has it in a public and unambiguous way.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Actually, Reagan initially cut taxes and then (unlike the teapartiests of today) realized that he would have to raise taxes, which he did
Reagan also (like the op said) increased military spending dramatically and cut social programs, effectively diverting the tax revenues from the poor to the wealthy
Bush 2 played the game much harder and kept tax cuts in place while riding the national debt to new heights. As far as military spending went, they kept the mounting war debt off the books, which magically made Obama responsible for it when he brought that debt back on the books
It IS all the childish games that the gop has decided to play on Americans that have put us in this position and no amount of o'really bloviating or hannity shouting down the truth will change that
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Theorists who did thought experiments. Now, how about a particle physicist that needs a multibillion dollar collider that may discover something that has absolutely no economic value - at least in the near term?
You believe then, that since you are unable to conceive of its value and articulate that vision sufficient to convince people (the rich and the corporations) to fund it, that instead you should use guns to force them to pay for it?
Your concept essentially reduces to only taxpayers can vote, and rich people's votes count more than others'. This is exactly what this country has been against from day one.
You stopped learning history beyond about 5th grade?
Only white male landowners could vote.
In these enlightened times, we should change that to only those who own their primary residence in the area can vote.
Federal science funding is near an all time high (disregarding the one-time stimulus nonsense):
http://www.nature.com/news/201...
Whether billionaires also spend money on additional research makes no iota of difference to the publicly funded research.
Furthermore, large-scale government funding of research is historically a relatively recent phenomenon and closely tied to the rise of socialism and communism: socialist and communist regimes in large part tried to direct research for what their central planners considered "the public good", and the US responded in turn with nuclear weapons research, research into industrial agriculture, etc. Let's not even get into publicly funded research into social science, politics, and race. So, it isn't even clear that publicly funded research is a good thing. But whether it is or not, we have plenty of it.
A free market in education lets parents choose what their children learn, which results in a wide diversity of viewpoints being taught. That's a good approach.
The approach we are increasingly heading towards is having everybody educated according to a single, government-imposed standard. That results in exactly what you fear: generations of students who "get fed biased information and suffer for it on the world stage".
Don't believe me? Look at the US education system. It's not the private schools that are dragging it down in international comparisons, it's the public schools. And public schools drag us down despite having some of the highest per pupil spending on the planet.
It works for commercial stuff, why not use the website for this too? Get the news organizations to advertise it.
The overbearing, unrepresentative, one-size-fits-all approach that we're suffering from right now is simply due to trying to have a single federal government make more and more decisions about economics, social policy, etc.
There is a much simpler and more traditional way of achieving the same effect: reduce the size and power of the federal government. That way, people will naturally sort themselves into states and counties with similar political interests and leanings, and one state/county has little power over another. I.e., if people in your neighborhood don't spend money the way you like it, just move. That has a number of advantages over your approach, foremost that people need to live with the consequences of their choices (i.e., if they want low welfare spending, they must move in a community with low welfare spending), and that changes in allocation can't be made on a whim but exact a price from people who make those changes (i.e., moving).
Science for the common good only existed for a short time in the mid to late 20th century, prior to that, science, like the arts, was financed by various patrons. One only needs to look at the battle between Tesla and Edision to realize that one of the biggest "inventions" that change the world in the past 100 years or so, wasn't a government project.
Technology research, at least those not related to the military, have rarely been funded on the public dime, except for the past 50 years.
Bush 2 didn't "keep tax cuts in place" - he significantly cut taxes on the richest 20%, and the Congressional Republicans have made keeping those cuts in place one of their highest priorities even under Obama and the 2008 supermajority. That means that when the debts Bush ran up come due, the middle class will have a much larger share of the spending than they would have had.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Sure, the Feds also put a good bit of money into medicine and basic research and even social sciences, but the largest driver of US scientific research and development over the last five or more decades has been the military, either directly or indirectly (e.g. research into computers not only drives military use of computers, aircraft builders (for the military) and NASA (for the missile programs) funded a lot of computer and mathematical research.) We've gotten some useful spinoffs from it (like the internet and GPS and Tang freezedried orange juice), but it's taken a lot of scientists away from doing medical research, energy efficiency, or other things that should have been higher social priorities. Some of that airplane development has been dual-use, since a 747 to haul passengers is a lot like a military cargo plane or an older slower bomber, but a lot of it has diverted people and money that could have been making the world a better place into the military.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I explain our current undemocratic scientific system within the [rich-]Western world to my friends & family & they call me insane, but someone writes an article about it & they're a 'journalist'. I need new friends & family.
you can't handle the truth.
Billionaires tend to be far more critical of what their money finances than government granting authorities. Consider all of the scandals involving made up data. A billionaire who funded that might get it checked out before allowing it to be published. A government agency won't. A billionaire who discovers shenanigans certainly won't fund that researcher again, a government agency probably will.
From the summary: "Steven Edwards of the American Association for the Advancement of Science says...", granted I don't know Steven, but you're suggestion implies that the research community is more concerned with protecting scam artists, than they are concerned with the advancedment of science. Do you really believe most researchers endorse fraud?
:)
- Because that's what you are implying.
Publish or perish isn't perfect, and it certainly produces many publications of limited novelty. On the other hand that is good, because it makes researchers share incomplete discoveries. But to suggest that the community is looking out for the interests of scam artists, is crazy talk..
- Get real!
Note, while publish or perish does make fraud tempting, I'm sure most researchers are honest... Most intelligent people who wants to scam their way to fame and fortune does to wall street and becomes a billionarie. Committing fraud as a researcher is much harder than on wall street, and a lot less rewarding...
Seriously, internet scammers are probably making more money than most researchers.
Yes, what I meant is that when faced with increasing deficits due to his tax cuts and military spending, unlike Reagan, he refused to push his party towards accepting tax increases
Reagan was a moderate compared to the current gopers and their quest to find the next Reagan will fail because their would reject the real Reagan as a rino
And yes, the middle class will bear the brunt of this and considering the reliance on sales taxes, the poor will pay more towards this debt as well
What needs to be said is, no I do not hate the wealthy, but yes I feel that they need to pay more in taxes, considering that they have done so well in the economic environment that this country created for them
And, if they decide to leave this country in droves, then they can enjoy higher taxes in Europe, political corruption in Asia or the costs of paying for their own police force and infrastructure anywhere else
Wherever You Go, There You Are
First thing I could think of. If it is anything like Portal, bring on the eccentric billionaire science!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Oh. I thought it was either The Graduate or Animal House.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A lot of posts here are complaining/discussing the downfalls of private funding. I don't care- As long as (1) We don't stop _also_ publicly funding pie-in-the-sky scientific research and (2) it is still science. Verifiable and reproducible science.
That is, why can't we just have both? I'm happy that Bill Gates, in his old age, is throwing shit-fuck-tons of money at things he believes to be a problem. Fantastic!
What if the Billionaire WANTS a certain answer and lets the scientist know it, so that the "data" can be published for a huge return on investment for the billionaire? Tobacco industry did this.
Most don't go quite this far. They just request many studies from many different groups. If 7/8 studies have results not in their favor, they bury seven and publish the one that supports their viewpoint/stance.
technology funding in the US...
You can't help but be fascinated and confused.
I sincerely believe many problems like this would work themselves out over time if kids just had the kinds of access to chemistry sets and hands-on, practical science education they used to have, before industry and government increasingly "worked together" to "protect" everybody from themselves...
Basic research pays off in general wealth, usually quite a few years down the line. Consider the laser; invented (IIRC) in the 1950s, and was economically unimportant for quite a few decades. Anybody who invested in it at the start got no specific benefit from it, while anybody who watches Blu-Ray and DVDs do benefit.
This means that basic research is not in any particular person's financial interest. Every individual is financially better off not contributing towards it themselves.
Your ideological purity would result in a society significantly poorer than the one we have. I reject it on that basis.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
nonsense, monarchy with hereditary succession is the norm