Why Isn't the US Government Funding Research? 599
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?"
Its simple.... (Score:1, Interesting)
The government exists to pave roads, protect the borders, pick up the trash (at least in my city), and maintain parks. Public water is a good idea too. Everything else is a waste of good tax payer dollars. The more dollars that are in your pocket the more you can spend on things that drive innovation. 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? Oh, and do you just start from scratch? I mean there are scores of next generation batteries being worked on right now, with a lot of inroads being built behind closed doors. It doesn't really make sense to just start with nothing and try to compete with that. This is also market manipulation. A public domain battery concept would ultimately undermine any company's investment in battery research and development. Doesn't the government own GM anyways now? I mean, look at it this way, your tax dollars are already going to battery research.
At least the new cameros look sweet. There might be some hope left for good old gm....
Medical research (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me that the first and heaviest place to go is medical research. Healthcare costs in the United States are so high that international health insurance plans generally just cover every country that isn't America. A huge part of the problem is the extreme expense associated with the opaque nature of the pharmaceutical industry. When it's actually profitable to run extremely long primetime commercials advertising certain medicines, it's blatantly obvious that there's something horrendously wrong with the system -- clearly the proper medication shouldn't depend on what you saw on TV last night.
Worse, a lot of drug research is publicly funded, but then the results wind up privatized. I'm guessing that if we got healthcare costs down on the supply end we wouldn't have so many problems with health insurance in this country.
Nanotech & Enhancing Renewable Energy (Score:2, Interesting)
ITER (Score:3, Interesting)
ITER is the world's best chance of obtaining almost infinite amounts of clean energy. Most of the recent press about the National Ignition Facility has ignored one key fact - the NIF is about creating fusion explosions to model bombs. Sure, it can also be used for fusion power research, but that's not the primary reason it received it's funding. ITER is about developing commercial fusion using a tokamak.
Also, the way the US cancelled all funding for ITER for 2008 was pretty disgusting. If a country becomes a partner in such large science projects, they need to stick with it, rather than screwing everyone around
Re:Its simple.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does the government exists to pave roads? Or pick up "trash" and maintain parks?
If you're happy to run road builders and private street cleaners out of business then why not battery research firms? Why is that tiny sector more deserving of protection than a large landowner who wants to build a dam, lay pipe and sell the water?
Bring a bit of consistency to your ideals for goodness sake, you say the government exists to do x,y,z someone else says that it exists to do a,b and z and someone else says they exist to do a-z. The truth is the government exists to do whatever the people consent to them doing. If that means researching batteries then that is the choice of the people. Whether it's a good or bad choice is another story.
- I await the people trying to figure out which political stripe they can flame me as.
Re:Corporate research doesn't want to compete (Score:3, Interesting)
You want to die so that a clone of you can go off and pretend to be you?
Re:Its simple.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why you're wrong is as simple as the difference between advanced research funded by the government in the hopes of advancing science and narrow research funded by corporations in order to keep their profit margins at an acceptable level while not falling behind their competitors.
The really big gains over the past 50 years have seldom been privately funded because that is simply not their goal. If they make a breakthrough it's either by accident or because they've pushed their current capability to the point which requires a breakthrough to avoid stagnation.
Re:Baby Boomers (Score:3, Interesting)
I begin to wonder if we've had it backwards... rather than regulations being made in response to corruption, perhaps the existence of regulations to a large degree *drives* corruption.
There are specific segments of gov't where this is definitely so, but your remarks made me consider that it may in fact be far more general.
Re:Because they're funding Iraq (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know why you got marked insightful. Iraq funding is all borrowed money (deficit spending) and until this year was off budget. That means that if it stopped, the funding would stop and congress couldn't spend it somewhere else.
Obama did put it on budget this year (or is trying to) and if congress had any whit to them, they would take it back off. When it's on budget, the budget ceiling gets raised and when the war stops, the money can be used for something else. The problem with this is that it still is deficit spending and is in large being used to justify deficits larger then it's cost. Congress knows this but is probably going to ignore it and instead of lowering the ceiling, they will just continue to spend "the savings from not spending on the war".
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
If we don't want to play World Policeman I'm sure China would be happy to step in.
Where is the "-1 misguided" button? China cares for it's trade but has consistently voted against international intervention in sovereign countries in the UN Security Council. They don't like outsiders telling them what to do, and they refuse to tell other countries how to run their internal affairs to the point of ignoring serious human rights abuses.
The US and France are the only two countries consistently trying to police the world. Curiously, both governments ultimately have come out of the Enlightenment movement. I'll stop now before I seriously start to believe in the Bavarian Illuminati myself.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd suspect that China's refusal to support intervention has less less to do with wanting to leave everyone alone and more with just opposing it because it's the West.
Remember, China (or at least its government) is still a Leninist state. They may have opened up trade and dabbled in the free market, but that's just because they realized a complete command economy just doesn't work. China's like a drug dealer, in a way--we're both quite happy to do business, because it makes him rich and gets us high... but he certainly doesn't have our best interests at heart. They've been laughing all the way to the bank for a couple decades now.
What research we should do (Score:5, Interesting)
This one's really obvious to me: biomedical research, particularly where there is not a profit motive. There are two main classes of potential medicines that never make it to the shelf for stupid reasons.
1) Discoveries made in a lab that are never moved forward into a practical technology, often because there are only so many drug companies who only have so much time, and they have out competed smaller companies that might otherwise do additional research. This effect is why you see so many exciting scientific reports, like "Scientists cure 10 kinds of cancer in mice with white blood cell treatment!" or whatever, that never even go into human studies or trials, much less make it to the drugstore.
2) Potential medicines or treatments that may be extremely useful but cannot be patented and so never get funding for research, because the company who spent 15 million to do the research would immediately get outcompeted by other companies who wouldn't have to recoup the research investment. Hundreds of these exist. For example, scientists discovered decades ago that the hormone progesterone dramatically increases the speed of wound healing (first noticed when it was observed that pregnant mice heal faster than other mice). It has never been studied as a potential treatment for wounds, however, because progesterone can't be patented.
Many examples fit both categories 1 and 2. The easy solution, especially in case #2, is for the government to fund the research for the public good, and let all companies manufacture any successful resulting products it as low-cost generics.
Shouting Doesn't Make It So (Score:3, Interesting)
Gas cost about 34 cents a gallon, or about $2.00 in today's terms, but Americans were more concerned about air pollution.
The Electrovair II, a show car unveiled in 1966 was an improved version of 1964's Electrovair I. Both were based on the rear-engine gas-powered Chevrolet Corvair, whose design provided a convenient location for the batteries. The large battery pack went under the hood, while the electric motor drove the wheels from the back of the car.
The Electrovair II used silver-zinc batteries because they delivered high power. (These were the same batteries GM produced for use in intercontinental nuclear missiles)
The downside was that they were expensive and wore out quickly, as the carmaker admitted at the time. Performance was similar to the gas-powered Corvair, but range was still a problem. The car needed recharging after 40 to 80 miles.
"The objective is to determine what is technically feasible," GM wrote of its work on cars like the Electrovair, "regardless of whether a project ever will become economically possible." Electrovair II [cnn.com]
In contrast to the Electrovair, GM's 512 Series Urban Cars weren't designed for real roads.
The three cars, with their 30 to 40 mph top speed and limited acceleration, would operate either on a paved road system of their own or in reserved lanes of existing roads, because they could not mix safely with today's freeway of boulevard traffic.
Each car had a different drive system. The blue car, the 512 Hybrid, was a gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle. The red car was an all-electric car and the yellow car ran on a 12-horsepower 19.6 cubic inch (0.3-liter) two-cylinder engine. The silver three-wheeled car was the gasoline-powered 511 Commuter Vehicle.
GM featured the cars in a 1969 media event called the "Parade of Power." The show highlighted the automaker's research into various forms of alternative propulsion. Also included were jet-powered cars, a steam-powered Pontaic Grand Prix and an exhibit on "nuclear reactor systems as possible means of powering vehicles." GM's 512 Series Urban Cars [cnn.com]
As for auto workers, if you only have a GED, you should NEVER make 30/hr.... Sorry, just not right. If on the other hand, you have a degree in anything decent you have no business doing a simple assembly line job.
Someone here has a high opinion of himself.
You will be shocked if you check things like welds, body panel alignment, basic quality of individual components
When I see failures like these, I am more likely to ask questions about CAD/CAM engineering and the robots on the line.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:1, Interesting)
I think most Americans (well most Americans that know anything about history, and believe me there are people of all nationalities who know nothing about history) talk about the War of 1812 as the only one of import because it was the only one we were involved with, and view the French invasion of Russia as just another even in the larger scheme Napoleonic Wars. There were a lot of wars going on around 1812, most dealing with France starting in 1803, and one in the US starting in 1812. If anything I would imagine Americans are more familiar with the Napoleonic Wars than the War of 1812, because of its insignifiance and that the national anthem came from it is a bit of trivia. Nothing really happened, and it seems that Canadians apply the most significance to it, stemming from the militia myth I think.
The main American view point is that both sides decided they really didn't want to be in a war with eachother anymore, the British having larger problems in Europe, and in the US because of the economic effects of the British blockades. Especially with the Napoleonic Wars ending, meaning an end to the problems that started up the war in the first place. The whole thing was just kind of a flub.
Re:It was 80% (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's Obvious (Score:1, Interesting)
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
-- THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to William Stephens Smith, November 13, 1787.-The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd, vol. 12, p. 356 (1955).
It's not that I think we need a revolution, or even that I want there to be one. It's just that I think there *will* be a revolution.
Re:What research we should do (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not knocking the idea of government funded health research, but I can assure you that they already do that. Most biomedical research in this country is funded directly by federal agencies to the tune of several hundred billion (if it's not now up into the trillions collectively) dollars a year.
If that funding is going to companies that then patent the medicine for private profit while artificially inflating the price, that funding is part of the problem, not the solution.