Does Government Science Funding Drive Innovation? (wsj.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, British businessman and science journalist Matt Ridley argues that basic science research does not lead to technological innovation, and therefore isn't deserving of taxpayer funding. Ridley says, "Increasingly, technology is developing the kind of autonomy that hitherto characterized biological entities. The Stanford economist Brian Arthur argues that technology is self-organizing and can, in effect, reproduce and adapt to its environment. ... The implications of this new way of seeing technology—as an autonomous, evolving entity that continues to progress whoever is in charge—are startling. People are pawns in a process. We ride rather than drive the innovation wave. Technology will find its inventors, rather than vice versa.

Patents and copyright laws grant too much credit and reward to individuals and imply that technology evolves by jerks. Recall that the original rationale for granting patents was not to reward inventors with monopoly profits but to encourage them to share their inventions. ... It follows that there is less need for government to fund science: Industry will do this itself. Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."

Comments

Really?

[alvinrod]

Someone wants to make an argument that government investment into science and technology doesn't lead to anything useful on the internet? There's a lot of great technology we have today due to government investment. Granted they were hoping the research would lead to better ways to kill our enemies or to stop them from killing us, but we've got a lot of civilian use out of government investments into science and technology.

If anything, government needs to be more strict with publicly funded research and ensure that the results end up in the public domain rather than rotting while a patent expires or hidden behind a pay-walled journal.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The author is marketing his book.
2. The premise is on the monetary worth of the research done, not it's importance. If the government would ask corporations to pay for the tech it developed at the current rates, they'd go bankrupt and pay for decades to come.

He's also using CERN as an example, completely ignoring research such as the nuclear power plants, and more recently the Stellarator.

I'm curious if in his book, after bashing the government's if he shows how much money is spent on royalties well past their expiration date, on battling trolls and other statistics that show the "value".

Starting to feel the need for a plugin that replaces economist with "Idiot with a degree" to make articles like this easier to stomach.

Re:Really?

[grcumb]

Someone wants to make an argument that government investment into science and technology doesn't lead to anything useful on the internet? There's a lot of great technology we have today due to government investment.

Yeah... the internet, for example. :-)

Re:Really?

[dinfinity]

His 'argument' there pretty much boils down to: "it was going to be invented anyway"

To most people, the argument for public funding of science rests on a list of the discoveries made with public funds, from the Internet (defense science in the U.S.) to the Higgs boson (particle physics at CERN in Switzerland). But that is highly misleading. Given that government has funded science munificently from its huge tax take, it would be odd if it had not found out something. This tells us nothing about what would have been discovered by alternative funding arrangements.

There is some merit to the idea that all useful inventions will inevitably be done (the concept of technological determinism / technological imperative has been around for decades), but it is still idiotic to use that as an argument against government funding, as that line of thinking says nothing about when the inevitable will happen. A world in which the internet was invented 10 years later is not equivalent (and dare I say unpreferable) to ours.

There are too many other ways in which the reasoning in TFA is obviously flawed. Considering that you have to ask yourself the question:
Why the hell is this low quality shit even on Slashdot?

Re:Really?

[dryeo]

I don't think the internet would ever have been invented by private industry as there is no profit in it. Private industry was busy inventing walled gardens, AOL, CompuServe and of course Win95 originally shipped with MSN, not a web browser.
Here we are over a quarter of a century later and the internet is being twisted into walled gardens (Facebook, the Apple Store etc) as they're more profitable.

Re:Really?

[KGIII]

Here's an amusing thing... As you may know, I sold my business. I modeled traffic. It was pretty lucrative. I had a couple hundred employees in five different offices. I could say, "I've got mine, fuck you." I'm telling you, right now, that I really think you should be supporting Sanders. He's the best chance you've got. Will I pay more? Yup. I'm okay with that. I already pay more than I'm obligated to by way of donations to worthy causes. I pay more than I'm able to use to reduce my tax burden, even. I do it because it's the responsible thing to do. I do it because I'm not a selfish prick who thinks he got here of his own efforts and without the need of anyone else. I've eaten Ramen noodles. Hell, that's more than some had.

I'm sometimes confused for a socialist. No, I don't agree with their authoritarian behavior. I don't agree that they should be able to determine how I think and I don't think they'll be concerned with my rights as an individual. Sanders is not an extreme socialist, not at all. I'm probably further left than he - but for a whole different reason. See, I'm not a socialist because I reasoned my way to the conclusions I have reached. I didn't emote my way here. I want a strong, healthy, educated, safe, and productive society because it's better for everyone and is the best chance we have to actually make use of our rights and preserve our freedoms. Also, I don't want you stealing my shit because you don't have any of your own shit to keep you occupied. It's cheaper and simpler to prevent problems than it is to fix them.

So, much of my ideology actually has a similar outcome to socialism but without the draconian oversight, rights restrictions, and otherwise silly stuff. Sanders is fairly close to an ideal candidate - not an exact match. He's not best for my wallet, bank account, or investments. He's what's best for you. I'm not a selfish prick. I want what's best for you - because that's also best for me. I'm not an altruist, either. Damned right, I want you educated and working. I want you to be able to have something to fall back on. I want you healthy, I support (strongly) single payer health care. I support, strongly, reasonable taxation on wealth (we can argue where those lines should be).

I still employ a few people, domestic type stuff, and I pay a lower tax rate than they do. I know why - I'm taxed on capital gains and this means I'm taxed at a lower rate to encourage investment. True... I'm not going to stop making money just because you take some more of it. Hell, I had no idea that it was this lucrative. I actually have more money now than I had when I sold my business - and trust me, that wasn't easy to do - I made a goodly sum of cash from that. I retired at 50, eight years ago! I don't even *have* to invest. I can spend like a drunken sailor and be okay. I just like poking buttons.

Anyhow, it's maddening, at times, to be told what I believe and what I stand for. This comes from people who don't even understand the differences between rights and freedoms. They'll sit there, and argue, telling me how I think. I explain and the next thread, some of them, repeat the same damned idiocy. They're like Pavlovian dogs. It's like they've been trained to ignore something, perhaps like The Allegory of the Cave (Plato?) or something. I don't get it... I simply don't understand. This is not true in every case, I've reached a number of people and they've since learned the differences between a caricature and the real thing. There are still a bunch that don't get it.

Ah well... I suspect that you understand. You seem to. I just figured I'd elaborate for those who don't as well as vent some steam. Also, for those who do not understand the differences between rights and freedoms... Well... I like to phrase it like this: "I have the freedom to kill you. I do not have the right to do so. I am not at liberty to take your life."

Try getting by without fundamental science...

[matbury]

Typical narrow-minded view of research and knowledge. Not many corporations or private organisations invest in fundamental science research and nowhere hear at the scale and intensity that govt. funded research does. Without fundamental research, you don't have anything to base applied research on, which I guess is what they mean when they call it "innovation."

As for self-organising systems, there's plenty of fundamental research to show just how unpredictable and unstable they are in reality.

Guiding Hands

[ExecutorElassus]

Huh. How weird! Every time there's an article about, say, global warming, or efforts to correct imbalances in gender or ethnic representation in the sciences, or health care, there's always a sizable crowd of self-identified libertarians who show up and extol the virtues of unregulated markets and the need to rein in government spending. And now here we are, extending libertarian principles to their natural consequence (ie, taxpayers shouldn't be the ones to fund the sciences, but rather the market), and I see ... a puzzling lack of support for the idea.

It's almost as if taxpayer funding is only wasteful and frivolous if it benefits other people, and "libertarianism" is just a thin rhetorical cover for preserving privilege.

Ridley opposes state aid unless for himself

[Captain Kirk]

There is an old adage; everyone hates government spending except the government spending they benefit from themselves. In this case, almost every article Matt Ridley writes says how bad state aid is. Except when he was head of a bank himself, when times were tough he went to parliament with his hat in his hand to beg for a taxpayer bailout and suddenly state aid was a great idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley#Northern_Rock

If you want to change Matt Ridley's mind about state spending on research, give him a job in a research lab and watch with wonder as articles praising state aid for research emanate from his greedy mind.

Certainly a point to be made

[Crashmarik]

Rocketry and Artillery were both developed before Newtons laws of motion
Distilling and Steam Power were both around before thermodynamics
The compass was here long before Maxwell's equations.

The opposite points though are ridiculously easy to make.
No Semiconductor electronics without BCS band theory
No Atomic Power/Radiation therapy without Atomic theory
No Refrigeration without thermodynamics.

It seems the author is trying to make points by framing the debate in overly simplistic terms.

This ain't no trickle down

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing left of the WSJ's journalistic integrity. Nothing at all.

This is nothing but a sad attempt to apply "trickle down" economic theory to technology. Sadly for the WSJ, trickle down is thoroughly discredited in economics. This attempt to smear technological innovation with the trickle down brush isn't even plausible. Easy enough to see that these guys didn't get any engineering in their educations. Sigh...

What next? Are they going to try to tell us that corporations are self-regulating? Wait....

These folks know nothing of science.

[duckintheface]

"Having made innovations, it will then pay for research into the principles behind them. Having invented the steam engine, it will pay for thermodynamics."

Oh, brother. That's just ridiculous. It was an understanding of thermodynamics (by the physicist Denis Papin) that led to the innovation of the steam engine. They imply that some guy messing around in his basement will "innovate" something and only later will the principles behind it be understood. But it is basic research and the building of mathematical models of the world that lead to inventions. And those steps in basic science are not profitable. Many blind alleys will be followed before a basic advance in science is made. Only a government dedicated to basic research will follow that path for long enough to see solid usable results.

And if occasionally a private company does advance the frontiers of real science, that's great. But I wouldn't count on that for the progress of mankind. I do agree however with the author's premise that patents are abused. Folks have forgotten why we have a patent system. It's not to make money, it's to advance the sciences. Don't believe me? Just read Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the US Constitution.