Highway fatality rate with current cars, in the US is 2 per 100 million miles. So, he is saying that a Tesla will cut that number in half? That's a pretty bold statement. In addition, in most states, fatalities occur more often in rural areas, than urban. How many farmers are going to drive Teslas? Finally, in 2014, there were approximately 32,000 highway fatalities. It would take 30 years to reach the 1M mark they eliminated all of those fatalities.
The total deaths in Teslas, per million vehicle miles is still lower than "average" my a large margin. So investigating deaths in a car unusually safe seems like a witch hunt and a waste of time.
The total deaths in airline crashes per million miles travel is still much lower than average by a large margin and yet we investigate those. Why should automobiles be any different?
straight forward? Not really. But lets say that it is.
Where are all of the fatalities? They are on HIGHWAYS. They are not in cities and suburbs where you drive less than 40 mph and have airbags all around.
As such, if we were only looking at high speed roads i.e. highways, the average rate would be closer to 1 fatality / 20-45 million miles.
That would be easy enough to check. Statistically most accidents are within five miles of one's home, which makes sense because that is where most driving occurs. What you are saying, however, is that most fatal accidents occur on highways, even though that is a minority of total accidents (albeit, there is overlap between highway and home radius for many people).
Just look at the accident fatalities for a given state for several years and see where they occurred. A more thorough study would also look at the type of accident, because it is likely that no matter how good a Tesla is, it won't be able to prevent accidents where physics come into play, such as inclement weather or the semi that doesn't stop in time or even the person who cuts across lanes of traffic to take an exit when those lanes aren't clear.
Actually, you don't need to do anything. Musk is the one making the claim. He should provide the peer reviewed research proving his statement. Otherwise, it is just self serving marketing hype.
Sooner or later, maglev trains will achieve speeds over 500 mph. They'll never break the sound barrier (which is Hyperloop's promise), but, economically, they do not have to. One cannot justify the expense, at this time, to create a hyperloop to make a mere 300-mile trip in 30 minutes.
The current technology could already produce a maglev that could achieve speeds well over 500mph. The problem is not the technology but the effect of the sudden acceleration and deceleration on the average person. I don't see how the hyperloop will change the physics on the human body, but who knows, maybe everybody will put on a g-suit before the thing departs.
Is it a surprise that overclocking the card causes it to draw more power than it was designed for? Is it a surprise that as designed it is close to the limits of the power specs of the bus? It seems the problem isn't the card, but forcing the card into a configuration that it wasn't designed for. Here's a car example - back in the day, when they had distributors, you could manually changed the timing to improve performance. However, if you advanced the timing, too much, you could damage the engine. Is that the fault of the distributor, the engine or the person trying to "overclock" their car?
So, it will have 32GB of storage. Every generation has increased storage capabilities. The only reason this is important for iPhone users is the phone is stuck with the amount it had when purchased. What would be exciting news is if the new iPhone let the user add there own storage. User replaceable battery would be newsworthy, too.
. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
Or, if you are so worried about it, don't fly. Air travel is by far one of the safest means of travel. Would rebuilding all of the world's airports and replacing all of the planes significantly improve on that? Probably not. Will it make it cheaper to fly? Probably not. If it won't make it safer and it won't make it cheaper, then why do it?
If millions of Chinese stream reality shows starring themselves, that would mean that there are millions of Chinese on reality shows, would it not? Seems pretty excessive, even for a country with the population of China.
That's in part because new cars are loaded with helpful but expensive safety features like collision-avoidance systems.
Wrong factors. Median income people haven't been able to afford new cars for a while. And this is more a function of loss in purchasing power than about new (and expensive) safety features.
People in such conditions do what they have done for a long time - buy used cars. #firstworldproblem.
I agree. Unfortunately, the poorly thought out cash for clunkers during the bailout took a large number of cars destined for the used market out of circulation and destroyed them. This had the unintentional (or maybe it was intentional) consequence of driving up the prices of used cars which have not returned to normal. So, median income people can't buy new and now have to struggle to buy used.
Are you using MSRP for you numbers or street prices? While I agree the $34K figure in the article seems high, the price on the dealer lot in my locale is a lot closer to $26K after destination charges and the charges for all the other stuff that used to be included. Then, lets not forget the sales tax on the vehicle, here, that adds another $2,000. So that Accord requires $28,000 before it can be driven off the lot.
As for financing, the rule of thumb used to be no more than 10% of your income to car payments and no more than three years on financing. At 0% financing, to afford that $28,000 car would mean your income would need to be $93,000 (28,000/3 = $9,333/yr which if that is 10%, then annual income would be $93,333). Even using the lower $23,000 would bring annual income of over $70,000. Now, the national household median income for the US is just over $53,000. So, even at 0% financing, the car shouldn't cost more than $16,000 without putting one in financial risk.
Now, half the households in the country don't have the income to purchase today's vehicles, so instead of lowering the price as supply and demand would dictate, they extend the loan period to keep the payments down. However, if 10% and three years was financially sound in the past would it still not be, today? What happens with the longer loans, is that people end up being upside down, owing more for the vehicle than it is worth and if there is an accident, they are in real dire straights as the money they receive not only won't be enough to pay off the loan, let alone get a replacement vehicle.
Simply put, regardless if one uses the value from the article or your numbers, given the average household income for the US, cars are two expensive for half of the population to purchase.
It didn't help that cash for clunkers took out of service a large number of good cars that would have entered the used market. Without these cars in the supply chain, used car prices rose dramatically and with the rise in used car prices came the rise in new car prices. That was the real bailout for the auto industry, not the thousand of vehicles that were initially purchased during the "deal," but the ongoing higher prices that could now be and have been charged.
Many decent family cars out there are NOT, in any way, 34K new. A new Mazda 3 is a sensible car and starts under 20K. A Camry is 25K. You could buy a 350Z for less than 34K!
So plenty of families can afford new cars: They just can't afford large, over featured, expensive to repair urban assault vehicles. US streets would be better if nobody could.
A Mazda 3 probably is not a family car, at least a family with kids. Yes, you can buy a new Camry for as low as 25K, but that is the base model. I am actually in the market for a Camry and the local dealer has one at $27K which is pretty plain. The brunt of them are all close to 30K. Then one also has to figure in taxes and other fees. While I agree that there are family cars available for less than 34K, that number probably is not as far off as one might think when it comes to the total cost to purchase.
typical car is 33k? that's absurd... either that or people are buying more than they need. great 5 door cars that are comfortable are around 20k... so this "study" is simply bullshit.
That is assuming the dealer ordered those base models. Often, what they order has upgrades, so while they may be available somewhere for 20K, the actual price one actually has to pay is often a lot higher.
Back when minimum wage was $2.00/hour, you could by a new car between $2,000 and $3,000 (you could also spend more for a luxury cars and sports cars). Basically the purchase price was 1,000 to 1,500 times the minimum wage. Using today's minimum wage, that would put the price of a new car between $7,250 and $10,875.
Or, if you don't want to use minimum wage as the measure, the median household income of the time was $11,000. So a new car was between 18% and 27% of household income. The last census (2014) shows median household income $53,657, so a new car, compared to the 1970s should be $9,658 and $14,487.
Using either measure, it is readily apparant that wages have not kept up with the cost of new vehicles. The increased price of new vehicles also causes higher prices for used vehicles. So, while cars do last longer and have more features than in the past, they are at the same time less affordable by the majority of households.
That is not to say that cars are overpriced as this could easily be explained as median wages not increases with inflation for common household goods and expenses. That analysis is left to others.
Why should people who aren't being disruptive with their cell phone be denied having it?
The same reason we block NASCAR drivers from going 100+ MPH on the highway, even though they could do so safely. Or forbid any number of actions that can be used irresponsibly. Because the rules cannot say "you can use a cellphone, unless you're an ass about it." Every type of being an ass must be codified To the point where sometimes its far easier to say "don't bring a cellphone" instead of "read this 100 page booklet on appropriate cellphone use."
NASCAR cars are not street legal, so they can't be driven on public highways. Second, speed limit laws are ultimately enacted through the legislative process (not directly by the legislators, but by the authority the legislators give those who set them). As such, speed limits are set by the will of the people.
Here is a novel idea, if it is not acceptable to use a cell phone at such a venue, then Apple and Google should just disable the unacceptable features. Of course, they won't do that, because the reality is that it is not unacceptable. What is unacceptable is being a nuisance or obnoxious all personal behaviors. People acting like this isn't new. Most of the photos seen from Woodstock were taken with unapproved recording devices. The investigation of the Kennedy assassination relied on unapproved recording devices. The shooting in Orlando, again, much information is coming from unapproved recording devices. Simply put, there is ample case law that allows people in a public venue to take pictures or record what is going on as fair use. Of course, that doesn't give them the right to put their personal photos and recordings on line (ie. they have no fair use right to redistribute).
In short, if people taking pictures or recording events is a problem because it is a distraction, then the the event security should ask them to stop and if they don't have them leave, just like they do for any other disorderly conduct. If the problem is that people are posting these videos online, there are already ample laws to have the content taken down. In short, it is far better to address the person exhibiting the undesired behavior than it is to inconvenience everybody.
Better yet. If somebody violates their request. They should stop their set. Peer pressure of other attending the concert will stop the unwanted behavior.
The question should be what is the problem of having a cell phone at a concert? Obviously, there are jerks who will do obnoxious things with them, but then address those people. Why should people who aren't being disruptive with their cell phone be denied having it?
Big deal! Volkswagen Beetles did that years ago. Their slogan was something like "Volkswagen Beetles, definitely float. Just not indefinitely." or something like that.
Personally, I'm one of those people who still buy a CD and rip it to mp3s. Why, I've lost many an mp3 to a corrupted drive. Plus, I can listen to my music wherever I am, whether there is internet access or not and my listening habits aren't being sold for others to profit from at the expense of my personal privacy.
I'm okay with banning the use of cell phones to record the show, but that should be done with bouncers, not by locking up people's cell phones so that they are unavailable if an emergency should arise. Locking up the phones in bags represents a public safety concern, and thus should not be taken lightly.
If they don't want people filming the show, should be simple enough to bathe the stage in a wavelength of light that the human eye can't pick up, but the cameras in the phones still do.
Autonomous vehicles won't destroy the insurance company. Insurance assigns a dollar value to the risk involved. Assuming that autonomous vehicles are lower risk, then there will be lower premiums, but also lower payouts. So, yes, gross revenue will go down, but not necessarily net profit. And it is net profit which is the goal for shareholders.
At least gravitational waves are real. That alone makes it more useful to study than things like global warming. Humans aren't causing the Earth to get hotter, no matter how much you insist that your pseudoscience is real. Let's stop spending money to study fiction like global warming and then we'll have enough money to fund real research.
How would one know whether or not humans are causing the earth to get hotter, unless one were to research 1) if indeed the earth is getting hotter and 2) if so, the cause? Isn't that what research is all about -- forming a hypothesis and then conducting research to prove it true or false?
With global warming, there seem to be two possibilities -- either thousands of scientists with different political, spiritual and ethnic backgrounds have come to the conclusion that the planet is getting warmer or they all have conspired together against the big bad US for some ulterior motive. Even most skeptics to human caused global warming agree the planet is warming. The dispute is about the cause, man made or natural phenomenon.
Once again, we are faced with all of these researches involved in some massive conspiracy or not. However, it doesn't matter. If the planet is warming, regardless of whether it is from natural phenomenon or man-made, the research shows it will have devastating effects: crop producing areas will no longer be sustainable, coastal areas and many islands will flood, more violent weather patterns will occur and millions of people will be displaced because of these things. At least, that's what the research shows.
But that is the beauty of scientific endeavors. Others are free to research it and come up with different conclusions and then the scientific community gets together and works for consensus. But, let's say for the moment that climate change is pseudo-science and not occurring. By cutting off the research funds to study it, one actually plays into the hands of all of those conspiring scientists because their won't be anybody to refute their claims.
In the end, people are free to believe what they want about many things, whether right or wrong. But government leaders have a social contract to act on the best information they have available to protect their people. And obtaining that information requires research.
In the short term perhaps not. But no one can really say what the value of basic research is. Even if takes centuries for an application to be found, well, we know they exist, and further we now have an instrument capable of measuring some of the smallest known perturbations in space-time.
I am not saying the research isn't valuable, it is. It just isn't the same thing as the early research into electricity. Maybe some day it will bear fruit, but that isn't likely as the theories that predict gravitational waves also preclude them being very useful (kind of like Einstein's theories also posit that time travel is possible. Of course, it would require virtually all of the energy known to exist in the universe, but it is possible, if not very practical.).
Yes, all of those civilizations you mention, did many public works projects that had technologies come from them. But, they did not fund research for the sake of research, but instead to solve a problem. In most cases, it was not the government, per se, funding things, but the ruler. When one is organized in a monarchy or pseudo-monarchy, there is no real distinction between public funds and personal funds so the funding of projects is not truly by the government, any more than when the Renaissance popes commissioned great works of arts, it was the Catholic Church doing it. No, it was the ruler using those funds for what he believe to be a worthy endeavor. By default, since such rulers were the government it was government spending. But the reality was that scientists and artists, throughout history had wealthy benefactors, whether they be the king, the pope or some wealthy aristocrat. They weren't funded by the government in the sense we use the word today.
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Highway fatality rate with current cars, in the US is 2 per 100 million miles. So, he is saying that a Tesla will cut that number in half? That's a pretty bold statement. In addition, in most states, fatalities occur more often in rural areas, than urban. How many farmers are going to drive Teslas? Finally, in 2014, there were approximately 32,000 highway fatalities. It would take 30 years to reach the 1M mark they eliminated all of those fatalities.
The total deaths in Teslas, per million vehicle miles is still lower than "average" my a large margin. So investigating deaths in a car unusually safe seems like a witch hunt and a waste of time.
The total deaths in airline crashes per million miles travel is still much lower than average by a large margin and yet we investigate those. Why should automobiles be any different?
straight forward? Not really. But lets say that it is.
Where are all of the fatalities? They are on HIGHWAYS. They are not in cities and suburbs where you drive less than 40 mph and have airbags all around.
As such, if we were only looking at high speed roads i.e. highways, the average rate would be closer to 1 fatality / 20-45 million miles.
That would be easy enough to check. Statistically most accidents are within five miles of one's home, which makes sense because that is where most driving occurs. What you are saying, however, is that most fatal accidents occur on highways, even though that is a minority of total accidents (albeit, there is overlap between highway and home radius for many people).
Just look at the accident fatalities for a given state for several years and see where they occurred. A more thorough study would also look at the type of accident, because it is likely that no matter how good a Tesla is, it won't be able to prevent accidents where physics come into play, such as inclement weather or the semi that doesn't stop in time or even the person who cuts across lanes of traffic to take an exit when those lanes aren't clear.
Actually, you don't need to do anything. Musk is the one making the claim. He should provide the peer reviewed research proving his statement. Otherwise, it is just self serving marketing hype.
Sooner or later, maglev trains will achieve speeds over 500 mph. They'll never break the sound barrier (which is Hyperloop's promise), but, economically, they do not have to. One cannot justify the expense, at this time, to create a hyperloop to make a mere 300-mile trip in 30 minutes.
The current technology could already produce a maglev that could achieve speeds well over 500mph. The problem is not the technology but the effect of the sudden acceleration and deceleration on the average person. I don't see how the hyperloop will change the physics on the human body, but who knows, maybe everybody will put on a g-suit before the thing departs.
Is it a surprise that overclocking the card causes it to draw more power than it was designed for? Is it a surprise that as designed it is close to the limits of the power specs of the bus? It seems the problem isn't the card, but forcing the card into a configuration that it wasn't designed for. Here's a car example - back in the day, when they had distributors, you could manually changed the timing to improve performance. However, if you advanced the timing, too much, you could damage the engine. Is that the fault of the distributor, the engine or the person trying to "overclock" their car?
So, it will have 32GB of storage. Every generation has increased storage capabilities. The only reason this is important for iPhone users is the phone is stuck with the amount it had when purchased. What would be exciting news is if the new iPhone let the user add there own storage. User replaceable battery would be newsworthy, too.
. So what? Shall we continue to get killed because it is easier to produce aircraft with a design from 1950s?
Or, if you are so worried about it, don't fly. Air travel is by far one of the safest means of travel. Would rebuilding all of the world's airports and replacing all of the planes significantly improve on that? Probably not. Will it make it cheaper to fly? Probably not. If it won't make it safer and it won't make it cheaper, then why do it?
If millions of Chinese stream reality shows starring themselves, that would mean that there are millions of Chinese on reality shows, would it not? Seems pretty excessive, even for a country with the population of China.
That's in part because new cars are loaded with helpful but expensive safety features like collision-avoidance systems.
Wrong factors. Median income people haven't been able to afford new cars for a while. And this is more a function of loss in purchasing power than about new (and expensive) safety features.
People in such conditions do what they have done for a long time - buy used cars. #firstworldproblem.
I agree. Unfortunately, the poorly thought out cash for clunkers during the bailout took a large number of cars destined for the used market out of circulation and destroyed them. This had the unintentional (or maybe it was intentional) consequence of driving up the prices of used cars which have not returned to normal. So, median income people can't buy new and now have to struggle to buy used.
Are you using MSRP for you numbers or street prices? While I agree the $34K figure in the article seems high, the price on the dealer lot in my locale is a lot closer to $26K after destination charges and the charges for all the other stuff that used to be included. Then, lets not forget the sales tax on the vehicle, here, that adds another $2,000. So that Accord requires $28,000 before it can be driven off the lot.
As for financing, the rule of thumb used to be no more than 10% of your income to car payments and no more than three years on financing. At 0% financing, to afford that $28,000 car would mean your income would need to be $93,000 (28,000/3 = $9,333/yr which if that is 10%, then annual income would be $93,333). Even using the lower $23,000 would bring annual income of over $70,000. Now, the national household median income for the US is just over $53,000. So, even at 0% financing, the car shouldn't cost more than $16,000 without putting one in financial risk.
Now, half the households in the country don't have the income to purchase today's vehicles, so instead of lowering the price as supply and demand would dictate, they extend the loan period to keep the payments down. However, if 10% and three years was financially sound in the past would it still not be, today? What happens with the longer loans, is that people end up being upside down, owing more for the vehicle than it is worth and if there is an accident, they are in real dire straights as the money they receive not only won't be enough to pay off the loan, let alone get a replacement vehicle.
Simply put, regardless if one uses the value from the article or your numbers, given the average household income for the US, cars are two expensive for half of the population to purchase.
It didn't help that cash for clunkers took out of service a large number of good cars that would have entered the used market. Without these cars in the supply chain, used car prices rose dramatically and with the rise in used car prices came the rise in new car prices. That was the real bailout for the auto industry, not the thousand of vehicles that were initially purchased during the "deal," but the ongoing higher prices that could now be and have been charged.
Many decent family cars out there are NOT, in any way, 34K new. A new Mazda 3 is a sensible car and starts under 20K. A Camry is 25K. You could buy a 350Z for less than 34K!
So plenty of families can afford new cars: They just can't afford large, over featured, expensive to repair urban assault vehicles. US streets would be better if nobody could.
A Mazda 3 probably is not a family car, at least a family with kids. Yes, you can buy a new Camry for as low as 25K, but that is the base model. I am actually in the market for a Camry and the local dealer has one at $27K which is pretty plain. The brunt of them are all close to 30K. Then one also has to figure in taxes and other fees. While I agree that there are family cars available for less than 34K, that number probably is not as far off as one might think when it comes to the total cost to purchase.
typical car is 33k? that's absurd... either that or people are buying more than they need. great 5 door cars that are comfortable are around 20k... so this "study" is simply bullshit.
That is assuming the dealer ordered those base models. Often, what they order has upgrades, so while they may be available somewhere for 20K, the actual price one actually has to pay is often a lot higher.
Back when minimum wage was $2.00/hour, you could by a new car between $2,000 and $3,000 (you could also spend more for a luxury cars and sports cars). Basically the purchase price was 1,000 to 1,500 times the minimum wage. Using today's minimum wage, that would put the price of a new car between $7,250 and $10,875.
Or, if you don't want to use minimum wage as the measure, the median household income of the time was $11,000. So a new car was between 18% and 27% of household income. The last census (2014) shows median household income $53,657, so a new car, compared to the 1970s should be $9,658 and $14,487.
Using either measure, it is readily apparant that wages have not kept up with the cost of new vehicles. The increased price of new vehicles also causes higher prices for used vehicles. So, while cars do last longer and have more features than in the past, they are at the same time less affordable by the majority of households.
That is not to say that cars are overpriced as this could easily be explained as median wages not increases with inflation for common household goods and expenses. That analysis is left to others.
The same reason we block NASCAR drivers from going 100+ MPH on the highway, even though they could do so safely. Or forbid any number of actions that can be used irresponsibly. Because the rules cannot say "you can use a cellphone, unless you're an ass about it." Every type of being an ass must be codified To the point where sometimes its far easier to say "don't bring a cellphone" instead of "read this 100 page booklet on appropriate cellphone use."
NASCAR cars are not street legal, so they can't be driven on public highways. Second, speed limit laws are ultimately enacted through the legislative process (not directly by the legislators, but by the authority the legislators give those who set them). As such, speed limits are set by the will of the people.
Here is a novel idea, if it is not acceptable to use a cell phone at such a venue, then Apple and Google should just disable the unacceptable features. Of course, they won't do that, because the reality is that it is not unacceptable. What is unacceptable is being a nuisance or obnoxious all personal behaviors. People acting like this isn't new. Most of the photos seen from Woodstock were taken with unapproved recording devices. The investigation of the Kennedy assassination relied on unapproved recording devices. The shooting in Orlando, again, much information is coming from unapproved recording devices. Simply put, there is ample case law that allows people in a public venue to take pictures or record what is going on as fair use. Of course, that doesn't give them the right to put their personal photos and recordings on line (ie. they have no fair use right to redistribute).
In short, if people taking pictures or recording events is a problem because it is a distraction, then the the event security should ask them to stop and if they don't have them leave, just like they do for any other disorderly conduct. If the problem is that people are posting these videos online, there are already ample laws to have the content taken down. In short, it is far better to address the person exhibiting the undesired behavior than it is to inconvenience everybody.
Better yet. If somebody violates their request. They should stop their set. Peer pressure of other attending the concert will stop the unwanted behavior.
The question should be what is the problem of having a cell phone at a concert? Obviously, there are jerks who will do obnoxious things with them, but then address those people. Why should people who aren't being disruptive with their cell phone be denied having it?
Big deal! Volkswagen Beetles did that years ago. Their slogan was something like "Volkswagen Beetles, definitely float. Just not indefinitely." or something like that.
Personally, I'm one of those people who still buy a CD and rip it to mp3s. Why, I've lost many an mp3 to a corrupted drive. Plus, I can listen to my music wherever I am, whether there is internet access or not and my listening habits aren't being sold for others to profit from at the expense of my personal privacy.
Unless they are going to frisk everybody, just bring two phones. When they ask if you have a phone, serve up the dummy.
I'm okay with banning the use of cell phones to record the show, but that should be done with bouncers, not by locking up people's cell phones so that they are unavailable if an emergency should arise. Locking up the phones in bags represents a public safety concern, and thus should not be taken lightly.
If they don't want people filming the show, should be simple enough to bathe the stage in a wavelength of light that the human eye can't pick up, but the cameras in the phones still do.
Autonomous vehicles won't destroy the insurance company. Insurance assigns a dollar value to the risk involved. Assuming that autonomous vehicles are lower risk, then there will be lower premiums, but also lower payouts. So, yes, gross revenue will go down, but not necessarily net profit. And it is net profit which is the goal for shareholders.
At least gravitational waves are real. That alone makes it more useful to study than things like global warming. Humans aren't causing the Earth to get hotter, no matter how much you insist that your pseudoscience is real. Let's stop spending money to study fiction like global warming and then we'll have enough money to fund real research.
How would one know whether or not humans are causing the earth to get hotter, unless one were to research 1) if indeed the earth is getting hotter and 2) if so, the cause? Isn't that what research is all about -- forming a hypothesis and then conducting research to prove it true or false?
With global warming, there seem to be two possibilities -- either thousands of scientists with different political, spiritual and ethnic backgrounds have come to the conclusion that the planet is getting warmer or they all have conspired together against the big bad US for some ulterior motive. Even most skeptics to human caused global warming agree the planet is warming. The dispute is about the cause, man made or natural phenomenon.
Once again, we are faced with all of these researches involved in some massive conspiracy or not. However, it doesn't matter. If the planet is warming, regardless of whether it is from natural phenomenon or man-made, the research shows it will have devastating effects: crop producing areas will no longer be sustainable, coastal areas and many islands will flood, more violent weather patterns will occur and millions of people will be displaced because of these things. At least, that's what the research shows.
But that is the beauty of scientific endeavors. Others are free to research it and come up with different conclusions and then the scientific community gets together and works for consensus. But, let's say for the moment that climate change is pseudo-science and not occurring. By cutting off the research funds to study it, one actually plays into the hands of all of those conspiring scientists because their won't be anybody to refute their claims.
In the end, people are free to believe what they want about many things, whether right or wrong. But government leaders have a social contract to act on the best information they have available to protect their people. And obtaining that information requires research.
In the short term perhaps not. But no one can really say what the value of basic research is. Even if takes centuries for an application to be found, well, we know they exist, and further we now have an instrument capable of measuring some of the smallest known perturbations in space-time.
I am not saying the research isn't valuable, it is. It just isn't the same thing as the early research into electricity. Maybe some day it will bear fruit, but that isn't likely as the theories that predict gravitational waves also preclude them being very useful (kind of like Einstein's theories also posit that time travel is possible. Of course, it would require virtually all of the energy known to exist in the universe, but it is possible, if not very practical.).
Yes, all of those civilizations you mention, did many public works projects that had technologies come from them. But, they did not fund research for the sake of research, but instead to solve a problem. In most cases, it was not the government, per se, funding things, but the ruler. When one is organized in a monarchy or pseudo-monarchy, there is no real distinction between public funds and personal funds so the funding of projects is not truly by the government, any more than when the Renaissance popes commissioned great works of arts, it was the Catholic Church doing it. No, it was the ruler using those funds for what he believe to be a worthy endeavor. By default, since such rulers were the government it was government spending. But the reality was that scientists and artists, throughout history had wealthy benefactors, whether they be the king, the pope or some wealthy aristocrat. They weren't funded by the government in the sense we use the word today.