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?"
Fixed (Score:5, Funny)
From a historical standpoint, the US government has little experience with commercial enterprise... but has an amazing record for driving innovation during war-time.
obviously we need to get on the ball and invade china.
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.
Re:What research we should do (Score:5, Informative)
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.
you could not be more wrong. The reason that you have these kinds of reports is that the scientists doing the research are not the ones writing the press releases, never mind the actual articles that get published. Most employees in the press and in corporate/university press offices are not scientists. They are Humanities majors, and don't know shit about how science actually works. Terms like Goodness of Fit, Extrapolation, and the difference between conclusions and implications are lost on these people. Their job is to make headlines, not report the facts accurately.
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.
Progesterone is a steroid hormone, and as a result has anti-inflamatory properties. The reason that it aids in wound healing is that it suppresses certain components of the immune system. Fine if there is no contamination of the wound because it prevents inflamation from causing the wound to get worse before it gets better. However, if there is bacteria already present then this is a bad idea, becase the infection will do even more damage that the attenuated immune response will take longer to control. There is no need to look at progesterone within the scope you describe because we already understand how it does this, why, and why we shouldn't use it in most cases. In cases where we do want to suppress an overactive immune response, there are other drugs (many not under patent) that physicians prefer to use.
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.
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.
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My point was that his point was not actually a point at all. It was a regurgitation of uninformed press releases, and tinfoil hat conspiracy theories.
Now, the fact that many educated people can't tell the difference between press releases, marketing, and conspiracy theories and Real Science is something that deserves a lot of
Re:What research we should do (Score:4, Funny)
Oestrogen is also a naturally occurring hormone. It helps to stop new pregnancies in women. If women take it, they can't get pregnant and as a result, can drop thong for anybody they like without fear of getting pregnant. They have a nifty little pill for that. Has been popular for decades. Very competitive product. But you're right. It's all a conspiracy.
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Wars on abstract concepts don't count.
They do when the money we're spending isn't abstract.
Re:Fixed (Score:4, Informative)
Governments compete for resources in more ways than simply wars.
e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War#Application_outside_the_military [wikipedia.org]
Which is why this thinking from the title info is flawed (when applied to Governments)
"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."
Governments compete for resources and use (and work with) businesses to compete for resources. Therefore they are more likely to want to protect what they give to a business by making it closed information that prevents competitor (countries as well as) businesses just taking and using it to compete against them. Governments are playing effectively giant chess games with their resources trying to out smart their opponents at every turn.
Its a nice sharing world idea to just give the information away and then everyone benefits from it but the current world doesn't work that way.
Governments are exceptionally competitive in their outlook as they are filled with very competitive people all trying to climb up to ever greater levels of political power. Its no wonder then that they apply that same competitive thinking to everything they do. The same is true of high up corporate people in big businesses so its no wonder they want to work with politicians. Money and power used to make more money and power.
Our world throughout history has been composed of people holding one of two Utopian views which are ironically mutually exclusive. What some people want other people don't want and so we get two opposing groups each wanting something the other doesn't want.
Therefore if you want a sharing world, you will not get that by appointing competitive political suits to the role of managing the world as they don't want a world where everything is shared out. They don't even want to compete. They simply want to be in control and won't let others have a chance to compete if they can at all avoid it. (Meanwhile they will happily use divide on concur on all they wish to control). The rules they use to maintain control vary around the world, but ultimately they are still in control. So their thinking centers around means of maintaining control. Concepts of sharing are wrong as far as they are concerned, as they could then inadvertently be helping their competitors. Its therefore no wonder they so often bias towards seeking means of control.
Its for this reason I find our current time of witnessing the earliest moments of the growth of the Internet is utterly fascinating The Internet is growing out of the concepts of sharing knowledge. Its mutually exclusive to the concepts of control and yet its clear the majority of people around the world want to be able to sharing knowledge. (Exactly what they appointed politicians (and big business) doesn't want, but try ever getting that straight answer out politicians
Its fascinating that we are watching the world trying to come to terms with the concepts of sharing knowledge. Open source is another one of these battle ground areas where some think it should be closed and so they can maintain control over it (and want to maintain control over it).
I think we really are at a turning point in human history. Which way it goes who knows, but I can't help thinking the people in power don't want the Internet the way it is and would sooner use it to find new ways to control.
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Zerth's Generalization As any thread grows, it shall approach the output of an infinite amount of monkeys typing randomly. All past and current pet peeves shall come into play, many bad analogies shall occur, and someone will compare the topic to something else of a magnitude that is completely out of proportion.
You know who else typed randomly and had pet peeves? The Nazis.
That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Moon missions are two of the pinnacles of the 20th century scientific achievement
So, extrapolating from those two points, we just need a big, old-fashioned war. (hot or cold, as desired)
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
War certainly has driven a great deal of innovation.
But I think the question is why doesn't the government fund research outside of war? I know people didn't like McCain but he did want to fund research and offer reewards for things like new battery technology. Why doesn't Obama?
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
But I think the question is why doesn't the government fund research outside of war?
Because it's pretty easy to get people to agree to spend the necessary money, if it might save their, or their children's, lives. And, there's really no other situation where that threat is quite as real, as during war.
Global warming might end up killing us all, but that's a diffuse and abstract concept. The guy pointing nuclear missiles at your city, or launching mortars at your kid is much more concrete.
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Global warming won't kill us all, it will kill our grandchildren' grandchildren if it goes down as currently listed. Well, that is unless you start counting storm damage and weather events as "global warming" as if they haven't been around before.
The other is not only much more concrete, but effect the now instead of
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But I think the question is why doesn't the government fund research outside of war?
Because it's pretty easy to get people to agree to spend the necessary money, if it might save their, or their children's, lives. And, there's really no other situation where that threat is quite as real, as during war.
Global warming might end up killing us all, but that's a diffuse and abstract concept. The guy pointing nuclear missiles at your city, or launching mortars at your kid is much more concrete.
I think that you guys are missing a big point: the Apollo or Manhattan projects were, to some extent, "useless" research.
Building a nuclear bomb had nothing to do with cheap electricity, new materials, and such. The Apollo project was knowledge for knowledge's sake, and yet many of the things done on that project are now familiar to us in everyday life.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Informative)
The Apollo project was knowledge for knowledge's sake [...]
I guess you never heard of the Space Race [wikipedia.org].
The current space program could be, more accurately, described as "knowledge for knowledge's sake". Compare NASA's funding level now, to when we had a more concrete goal.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's pretty easy to get people to agree to spend the necessary money, if it might save their, or their children's, lives.
Depends on perceived immediacy and plenty of legislation gets pushed through on public innumeracy. We'll all die of heart disease, stroke or cancer before we find Saddam Hussein's WMDs but lots of luck getting universal health care much less a _return_ to common intellectual property coming out of universities. The Manhattan Project and Apollo were before Saint Ronald Reagan proclaimed that research should be private and universities themselves should be run as a business.
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Global warming doesn't affect us now.
I live in Nunavut you insensitive clod. [thestar.com]
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Then you should be happy! Global warming will turn Nunavut into Nassau eventually. It's doing you a favor!
Myself, I am a proud member of AFGW: Alaskans for Global Warming. We couldn't wait for plate tectonics to bring California up here, so we're bringing the mountain to Muhammed. Drill, baby, drill!
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
War certainly has driven a great deal of innovation.
That it has. Michelangelo got his engineering degree building war machines. Those machines have taught us a lot about ballistics, momentum, and other fields of physics.
But I think the question is why doesn't the government fund research outside of war?
The proper domains of the US government are to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty. You've covered defense. General welfare is covered by the USDA and the FDA, where they ensure the food and drugs we get are (supposedly) wholesome and nutritious. The blessings of liberty need no research - they need common sense (in rare supply these days, I'll admit).
The true answer to your post lies in the US Constitution [wikipedia.org], Article 1, Section 8, clause 8: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
By encouraging intellectual property suits and elevating copyrights and patents to their present position we've gotten to the point where these things prevent the progress they were intended to promote. Since progress is the essential good that exclusive rights to inventions and creations were created for, it only makes sense to do away with the protections now that have come to subvert that need. We should immediately abolish and vacate all patents and copyrights, and prohibit their issue except in the cause of progress. When they issue they should be for no more than the original terms - 17 years for patents, 27 years for copyright, no extensions and whether or not the inventor or creator is dead is irrelevant.
Also, to post a patent you should have to post a $100,000 bond that the material is original. If the material is unoriginal, the bond would be forfeit. This will to some small degree decrease the trolls who use the spare time on their lawyer retainer contracts to file unuseful or obvious patents.
Before you argue with me on this, consider this merit of copyright: Sonny Bono believed that copyright should last "forever". When informed that this would violate the US Constitution's mandate of "for limited times" he offered "Forever, less one day". A lawmaker and intellectual property rights activist himself, he co-authored and promoted The Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 [wikipedia.org]. This law prevented many thousands of works from falling into the public domain (your ownership and mine - essentially, "the pool of our culture"). Essentially, with this law they deprived you and me of stuff that would have been ours in due course. They stole from us. It spanned the time until the next extension of copyright which, although it doesn't guarantee perpetual protection of Steamboat Willie, does guarantee his protection until such time as they can extend it again, ad infinitum.
Cher, and Sonny Bono's estate are now suing [techdirt.com] Universal music over the profits from the rights to his music. Apparently this stalwart pillar of the community is accused of using accounting tricks and shell corporations to evade paying the estate of this esteemed artist his due share.
So when they say it's for the artist... beware. The truth is that in Hollywood a share of the net is a share of nothing - always. It's kind of ironic that the people he worked so hard to serve are robbing his grave, seeing as how he worked so hard to enable them to steal from us.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, to post a patent you should have to post a $100,000 bond that the material is original. If the material is unoriginal, the bond would be forfeit. This will to some small degree decrease the trolls who use the spare time on their lawyer retainer contracts to file unuseful or obvious patents.
It also completely removes any opportunity for regular garage tinkerers to be able to patent something that they come up with. It may be rare these days, but it's not unheard-of.
The system needs an overhaul, but what you propose is so close to scrapping it that you may as well do it. Why should a concept that once worked be scrapped in its entirety because of the abuses that come from some changes to it? Wouldn't reversion to something closer to the older model be more appropriate?
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Here [technologyreview.com] you go.
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Another part of the puzzle is the war must be against another superpower. Fighting non-superpowers has gotten has really nowhere, 'Nam, Iraq, and the South.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Another part of the puzzle is the war must be against another superpower.
Of course. It has got to be a real fight to the finish. No one fights harder, or is more inventive, than when their back's against the wall. It's not like we're in any danger of Vietnam or Iraq coming over here, and kicking our ass.
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So, extrapolating from those two points, we just need a big, old-fashioned war.
It worked for DS9 and Voyager...
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War on Terror, War on Drugs, War on x+1.
What was that again?
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
The Manhattan Project and the Apollo Moon missions are two of the pinnacles of the 20th century scientific achievement
So, extrapolating from those two points, we just need a big, old-fashioned war. (hot or cold, as desired)
Just to keep the noise down on the other continents, could you maybe make it a civil war this time? Or maybe something with Canada and/or Mexico... Thanks!
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Informative)
the war between the US and Britain was a stalemate
It always amuses me to hear Americans talk about the war of 1812, as if there was only one of any import. And there was; the French invasion of Russia, which was the beginning of the end of Napoleon's empire and changed the political landscape for Europe and the colonies. By 1812, Britain had been at war with France for 9 years, and would continue to be for another 3 years. 1812 came right in the middle of the Peninsula War, where the Spanish, Portuguese, and British, were repelling the French invasion.
With this background, it's hardly surprising that the British navy didn't devote much by way of resources to a sideshow. The point of the war - to stop the Americans supporting an aggressive empire-building regime in Europe - became irrelevant with Waterloo, and the war ended.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
We flirted with colonialism circa 1900, decided we didn't really like it too much, then got involved in WWI. Managed to hide from war for 22 years, got violently drawn into WWII. Since then I think it comes down to, we've decided it's better to intervene in those little spats before they turn into world wars. Because world wars suck.
And I'll come down tentatively on the side of our involvement being good... If we don't want to play World Policeman I'm sure China would be happy to step in.
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:4, Insightful)
I suppose you're technically correct. By annexing Tibet first, it ceased to be another country.
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.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/feb/08/development.topstories3 [guardian.co.uk]
You were saying? China has international aid groups all over the second and third world.
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
America has a hard time being at peace in the present world because, as the top dog and de facto world policeman, we inevitably get drawn into everyone's little spats.
And there's a large part of the problem. No-one wants the US to be world policeman. What the world wants is for the US to be a team player. It just doesn't seem able to do that.
But being the bully of the playground isn't a basis for peace; it's the basis for confrontation.
I know that person by person US folk are wonderful, but as the USA, I wouldn't want you anywhere near me. It really doesn't help that the US elected a lying, corrupt, obsessively violent, cabal of thugs to represent it for eight years.
We flirted with colonialism circa 1900, decided we didn't really like it too much, then got involved in WWI. Managed to hide from war for 22 years, got violently drawn into WWII. Since then I think it comes down to, we've decided it's better to intervene in those little spats before they turn into world wars. Because world wars suck.
The US involves itself where it is politically expedient to do so. And where there is no convenient 'spat', it creates one.
There are tens, if not hundreds, of spats that the US could willingly involve itself for the good of the indigenous peoples. It picks and chooses those that are political expedient. This isn't policing, it's politicing, and deeply cynical to boot.
And I'll come down tentatively on the side of our involvement being good... If we don't want to play World Policeman I'm sure China would be happy to step in.
China seems to be the new "fear" tool in the US; used for the now routine confrontation arguments.
The US needs to mature, to grow up, politically and become a team player instead of presenting itself as an arrogant thug. This might take some time, especially bringing the majority of its electorate with it
Re:That's Obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's a large part of the problem. No-one wants the US to be world policeman. What the world wants is for the US to be a team player.
No, they don't want the "US to be a team player". They want the US to intervene when it is in their interest (see former Yugoslavia) and not intervene when they perceive it as not being in their interest (see Iraq and Saddam Husein's payments to the French to eliminate the embargo).
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
As the Taliban advance through Pakistan the President of the United States of America Barack Obama requested for increased presence from NATO allies. He did not get it [timesonline.co.uk]
One only has to look at the funding the US spends on their military to see who is doing the bulk of the heavy lifting in ensuring the safety of the West. The West being Europe, North America, Australia/New Zealand, Japan, Israel, South Korea and what is becoming of India. And let us not forget that it was the US playing world police who saved Europe in WWII, changed Japan from a militaristic empire to the Western democracy that they are now, brought South Korea from poverty to wealth and has been a staunch ally of the only truly western country in the middle east.
I get tired of (in particular European) psuedo-intellectuals who proclaim a general distain for US foreign policy while they sit in the luxury provided by the protection of the US defense forces. I get tired of the people who believe that the US should never intervene themselves in foreign conflict, or alternatively believe that the US should involve itself in every foreign conflict. The US won the cold war not by physically conquering the Russian state but by ensuring that enough countries around the world remained free so as to be able to destroy communism through economy instead of bombs.
Iraq is a touchstone issue that divides right and left around the world. It symbolises US interventionist tactics in a way that Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea and WWII could not. The US is no longer engaged in the cold war. It no longer has a great evil to overcome. But the US realises as a nation that if they allow small evils to grow that they become great evils. The US realises that the funding that Iraq was providing to terrorists probably would not reach US shores, but would be focussed on Lebanon and Israel and eventually would cross into European and asian countries.
The real lessons that the US learned, but that Europe seems to have missed out of WWI and WWII is that ideology is the most dangerous weapon and the most likely to bring destruction down on us all. Muslim extremism (-1 troll mod points right there) has already turned the prosperous jewel of the middle east - Lebanon - into a wartorn and unstable country who have no real, credible hope of being stable in the near future. It was being financially supported largely from oil money from Iraq and Iran, and though the two countries hated each other more than they hated the West, we were still caught in its clutches.
The US can do no right in the eyes of those who are wilfully blind. If she turns away from intervention then the world calls her crass, rude and evil for not addressing the injustice. If she goes to war against the evil and does everything in her power to minimise the loss of life on both sides she is accused of being warmongerers and extremists. The US cannot win such an argument and making it is only endangering the whole of western civilisation - the civilisation that has largely managed to feed, clothe and house its citizens and provided medical care and prosperity to the people as a whole.
Communism is largely dead now and we have the US to blame. When the US conquers the power behind religious extremism the US will again be the cause. Isn't that a country worth giving the benefit of the doubt? Isn't that a country worth cutting a little slack?
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Um, why? I think the US govt does a good job of tracking mainstream opinion. Personally, I think the mainstream often does not act in its own best interests, but nevertheless so long as the majority is getting what they want (even if they want it for silly reasons), I don't see major discontent. I don't think the "culture wars" now are anything like what they were in the 60s, when assassin
Re:That's Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm starting to see this more and more. People seem to think that party politics has civil war as some kind of eventuality, and merrily throw out the idea that it's time for a revolution. Of course, every single person who does it seems to think a violent uprising is somehow easier to establish than it is to disestablish our current political parties from their currently entrenched positions.
I mean, really. You think a country of 300 million people would fight itself before reorganizing a political party structure? Really?
Every single person, including the both of you two, seem to like the idea of tossing out a phrase like "me too, I'm in for the revolution", as if your token resistance to power structure is accomplishing anything. I hate to tell you this, but it isn't, because the only thing it does is engender similar sentiment, rather than do anything even remotely productive.
Anyone who shares an earnest similar sentiment is completely out of touch with reality and does not, it seems, understand the political structures that have made great this country function so well for almost a quarter of a millennium.
The American Revolution wasn't a bunch of people saying "me too, I hate those faggots" about the British. It was a mostly educated populace subjected to various transgressions which escalated to the point where self-governance was the only option. Without the clear thinking and intelligence of the majority of the people who fought as rebels to form a new government, it would have been an almost comically bad failure, and only almost comical because of the number of deaths it surely would have produced for no real benefit.
You two, and everyone like you, keep on writing your "me too, this sux", if you wish. But please don't delude yourself into thinking you are in any way similar to the founding fathers of the USA. You are children in school, who dislike their somewhat strict teacher, writing on your desks about how much he sucks, and will accomplish just as much.
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Interesting. You seem to have given this some thought, but you may be starting with some skewed assumptions.
People seem to think that party politics has civil war as some kind of eventuality, and merrily throw out the idea that it's time for a revolution.
I don't think it's really party politics that people view as leading to radical civil / revolutionary conflict, but rather that the duopoly created by the party system has developed it's own set of elite rulers that are completely out of touch with the views of the general populace. It's not the entrenched positions of the opposing parties leading to conflict, it's the entrenchment of the two partie
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Answer (Score:4, Funny)
We ran out of German scientists =/
Corporate research doesn't want to compete (Score:4, Insightful)
Raw research properly conducted on unexplored issues always discovers something. Either the experiment worked or it did not, and either way, something was learned. It always pays dividends - if not in new products and methods, in the avoidance of the repetition of failed experiments. This doesn't help the profits of the corporations that fund the election of political tools. That's progress. Progress is not the government's goal. The purposes of government are to ensure its persistence and toward that goal to deplete the surplus productivity so as to eliminate a surfeit of leisure. An excess of leisure is an invitation to insurrection.
TFS is correct that the US government forgot these things for a while, but they've remembered them since.
But... to answer the question: the big and the small. The fast and the slow. The literal, the virtual and the speculative. Most importantly, how to get offsite backup on the human genome. If we don't do that then nothing else matters.
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I hope you're right, because it looks like they're doing a big experiment on the economy right now...
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You want to die so that a clone of you can go off and pretend to be you?
One word... (Score:2)
fembots.
Fusion (Score:2)
Hot Fusion, not Cold Fusion that is.
We need to solve the world's energy problems, and as much as we all love green solar and wind its never going to scale to the levels needed to power the entire world like Fusion would.
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.
Re:Medical research (Score:5, Insightful)
Lobbyists and insurance companies are what got us into this mess.
Doctors and medical establishments learned that they had insurance companies by the balls at one point. Approved procedure could cost whatever they wanted, and insurance would pay it. Then they got all butthurt because real people couldn't afford to pay that much at all. Then insurance companies got revenge when everyone decided that doctors were a blank check in terms of lawsuit money. Insurance companies then offered insurance against lawsuits to the doctors, for a very high price.
So now what we have is a system where it costs two weeks worth of pay for the average American to get a single fucking X-ray that department stores were doing for free in the 60s. Of course I expect the expert opinion of the doctor to cost some money, but its ridiculous. And one of the reasons is because of this never ending war between doctors, lawsuits, and insurance companies.
I say we research some way to break the cycle. Like maybe making doctors and medical establishments explain why that aspirin costs a patient $100, when the entire bottle of 500 costs them 5% of that if they were to buy it themselves at a wholesale pharmacy.
Re:Medical research (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it goes a little deeper then insurance companies.
Medicare and medicaid pays based on an average costs of the approved treatments in the area. That places the hospitals interest into driving up those costs in order to get as much guaranteed money they can. Insurance companies negotiate based around the same standards and generally attempt to get lower prices but the prices are increased then discounted. This is why insurance pays different for in network and out of network access.
Sure, Insurance is part of the problem but government payments started it and still fuel it. The $100 dollar aspirin is an exaggeration but I know of hospitals charging $40 for one because a nurse has to give it to you and ask the doctor if it's ok first (yea, that's not covered in the already overpriced room and board). But when the government started paying like that, it more or less became a free ride because the more they can jump the averages, the more the government pays. I know a guy with no insurance and basically no way to pay- who broke his ankle and had to get pins placed in. The surgery was considered emergency and billed out at over 15k but they magically reduced the costs to around 2K if he agreed to make payments and kept current with them. I'm sure they didn't operate at a capitol loss by doing that, it probably more accurately reflect the real costs of the surgery even though they might not have pocketed as much profit.
Re: (Score:2)
Worse, a lot of drug research is publicly funded, but then the results wind up privatized.
Fortunately the NIH public access policy [nih.gov] is doing a lot to reverse this trend, but unsuprisingly, it's meeting with a lot of resistance [insidehighered.com]. Mostly from the publishers, not the drug companies, but that's a matter of whose ox is being gored. If the FDA ever gets serious about its threats to open up clinical trial data, you'll see a real brawl.
It is (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they're funding Iraq (Score:5, Insightful)
End of transmission...
Re: (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
Re:Because they're funding Iraq (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize that the amount of money spent in the past few months on the so-called "stimulus" has already dwarfed the total amount spent over several years on the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, right?
Baby Boomers (Score:4, Insightful)
I blame the baby-boomers, they were raised on idea of continual gain of benefits. Whether it was from capitalism, increased government benefits, or lower taxes. They continually have driven everything out of total self interest an screw society.
You say I am crazy? It was not my generation that,
I may be generalizing about baby boomers as a whole, but the leadership from my generation has not become CEOs, congressmen or senators, the baby boomers have.
Re:Baby Boomers (Score:4, Insightful)
As something of a tangent, this is a canard parroted by people who do not know much about banking regulations. It is worth pointing out, for example, that a number of industrialized countries that had no banking problems (like Canada) have never had a regulatory equivalent of the Glass-Steagall whipping boy. Ironically, that body of regulation was modified over the last few decades in order to *reduce* the number of bank failures, which it did, by allowing them to diversify their business. If diversifying investments was so bad it would 1) not be one of the fundamental rules of investment generally and 2) I would expect the industrialized countries without any such restrictions to have fared far worse than they did.
The problem wasn't lack of regulation, but a lot of stupid regulation and arguably pervasive corruption that is still in place today. Add on top of this a regulatory monoculture in global banking that allowed exploits to propagate, and the problem starts to become obvious.
Re: (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.
You're full of shit. (Score:5, Informative)
From the Brookings Institution.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/0423_canada_nivola.aspx [brookings.edu]
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999 basically overturned Glass Steagall. Take a look at any housing bubble chart you'd like. When did the spike start? About the same time the deregulation fantasy took effect, and corporations knowingly created bad mortgages and passed off the bad debt as good debt because no one had their eye on them. In summary, they knowingly created huge leveraged risks in order to pocket huge comissions and leave someone else holding the assets. If you can come up with a more plausible explanation, please go ahead.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It was not my generation that,
Funny, usually the people behind the desk running most everything behind your list are fresh out of MBA school looking to make money fast like they saw on TV.
It was 80% (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
The highest tax bracket was 80% in 1939. Today it's 35%.
I pray to God that you get what you just wished for.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Of course your implication that taxes (not the maximum tax rate) were higher in 1939 is still probably false.
The wikipedia article does not spell out at what income level that 80% kicked in. Nor how it compares to the average income of the time.
According to the IRS [irs.gov] that 1939 79% tax rate was for folks over $5m. Of course, they also claim that the 1951-1963 top tax bracket of 90% started at income of $400k. According to the census bureau [census.gov], in 1967, an income of $19k would put you in the top 5% of households, equivalent to $180k today. By wild extrapolation, you might imagine the 90% tax rate to start around $3.6-4m today.
In today's terms, if income tax rate topped out at 80% but only for incomes larger than 100 million then it would have practically no impact at all and certainly wouldn't end up accounting for more than a very small fraction of all taxes collected.
And how much benefit does a $200m earner gain from that second $100m? One often hears the argument that high salaries are req
91% in 1957 (Score:3, Informative)
My co-worker brought in an original 1957 IRS 1040 form with tax tables. The top rate in the tax table was 91% for income over $300,000.
Nanotech & Enhancing Renewable Energy (Score:2, Interesting)
Strange story (Score:2, Insightful)
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
You're linking two not-really-related issues. Bailouts for large companies are intended to avoid a chain reaction of collapses and thus preserve economic confidence. Publicly funded "Blue Sky" [wikipedia.org] research will provide for very long term improvements to the human race from scientific progress. If you're wanting to increase the money supply to prevent a recession, you're better off allocating the cash to areas that can absorb them readily (such as construction and consumer finance). Or just get Ben Bernanke a he
It was not the 70's. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure what foreign students have to do with this discussion? Having foreign students here is not a bad thing. In fact, I would like to see us rethink it and offer easy citizenship paths for these, wh
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As to research, yes, he CUT research dollars greatly, and then shifted a lot more into DARPA spending. I know, because the research I was on back then was converted to DARPA.
Why Isn't the US Government blah blah blah (Score:3, Insightful)
17 days ago STS-125, the forth in-orbit service of Hubble, ended successfully
12 days ago Gov. Schwarzenegger dedicated the largest laser on Earth to fusion research
Last week the DOE produced video [nanowerk.com] of a potential carbon nanotube memory device in operation.
3 days from now 7 people will blast into orbit, rendezvous with the ISS and further the construction of a giant orbital laboratory.
No government in history has ever, is now, or will ever again (post dollar collapse) facilitate as much raw research as the US federal government.
Just STFU please. Thanks.
it is... (Score:5, Informative)
The US government is funding research. A lot of it. So much that a giant company like GM opening a *single* research lab is big news. Either directly (through grants and contracts) or indirectly (through tax incentives) the government is funding much of the industrial research that is done anyway.
Why has science stalled since the 70s? That's when the number of physicists being trained exceeded the demand. The job market for physicists tanked and has never recovered (due to an excess of government funding for training). Physics became very competitive (rather than collaborative), and focused on making very small incremental changes in niche areas so that you could keep your job (big risks are bad, now). We've make tremendous scientific progress, but the system isn't designed for rock-star leaders and breakthroughs any more. More industrial labs will only change that until growth saturates again.
We need to either stop training too many physicists (and make sure we're not doing the same with other fields), or live with what we have (which does work well, for anyone who is not a physicist). To encourage risk (and thus greater... or at least flashier scientific rewards), we need more long term grants and contracts (long term being >10 years). If I know a several year project can fail, but I'll still be able to pay the rent, I'm more likely to try something new. To actually answer the question, I would put those grants in solar fuel research.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Your suggestion sounds like a variation of this physicists suggestion:
"The Big Crunch"
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html [caltech.edu]
But there are a few deeper issues. Goodstein, for example, talks about general elitist issues in education.
Another I add is another interpretation of what it means as you suggest that the number of physicists exceeded "demand" (in a classical economics sense), since is that not just another way of saying the number of physicists exceeded what those
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
Simple. Anything that can replace coal, oil & (Score:3)
That means funding research into electric cars (including those that use things like biofuel powered internal combustion engines as a backup)
That means funding research into (and building) new nuclear reactor designs that can take all the harmful waste (both from power generation and nuclear weapons) currently sitting in cooling ponds, storage facilities and vaults all over the US and turn it into more electricity (and into waste that will become radiation free in a much shorter time).
That means funding research into sustainable biofuels (both for vehicles and power plants) including hemp and switch-grass but NOT biofuels like corn that replace food crops
That means funding research into solar technology (and covering all that empty desert in the southwestern USA with solar collectors)
Most of all it means telling all the vested interests to go jump. The anti-drug campaigners who refuse to allow hemp to be grown because of its ties to marijuana. The anti-nuclear campaigners who fail to see that its possible to build a new nuclear reactor with a modern design (which is far less likely to fail in a way that releases radiation than the dinosaurs operating today) and then (and the new reactors come on stream) shut down the old dinosaurs (the ones that the ant-nuclear campaigners love to hate). It means telling the corn lobby (who seem to have the misguided belief that corn biofuels should be part of the energy equation into the future), the coal lobby (who believe that coal can be made "clean") and others to get stuffed.
Next question, please (Score:5, Insightful)
led me to wonder why the US government is pouring billions into buying companies instead of heavily funding useful research. You can give $10 billion to a company to squander or you can invest $10 billion into a battery research and just give the findings to the whole of the US industry for free.
Because the immediate problem is the recession.
GM can't build an electric car if the company goes into liquidation. GM can't sell an electric car if its dealers go into liquidation.
Mechanics can't service an electric car if they go bankrupt with their suppliers.
Infrastructure once damaged is very difficult and expensive to rebuild.
You have to stop the bleeding first.
Research isn't a panacea.
It would be easy to aquander $10 billion on projects that have no realistic prospect of success within a reasonable time frame.
The geek isn't an unbiased observer here.
It should be obvious that a very generous cut of that $10 billion he wants the government to spend will be headed his way - and not to the auto worker on the line in Detroit.
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 Electrova
Check the Constitution... (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly ,looking over the constitutional powers allotted to the federal government they have no f**king business buying businesses, funding research, baling businesses out, or a large host of other "responsibilities" they have taken on illegally. They're supposed to protect our borders and manage to screw that up. Run a post office, they do a lousy job of that. Supposed to regulate interstate commerce which they interpret to mean "involve themselves in anything they want to" rather than just making sure trade amongst the several states is fair. They are supposed to collect tariffs on imports rather than tax the citizenry. They seem to screw up just about everything. What's worse is the population of complete morons who continually vote for Democrats and/or Republicans and expect things to change for the better rather than staying the same. Even worse the population is made up of liberal sissy wymynists who would rather cower than do anything about it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Its simple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is getting some public governmental research entity started going to be remotely cost effective and efficient
Of course you're right. Government research is always so wasteful and inefficient. Remember that DARPAnet thing? What a dumb idea! Fortunately, it sank like every inefficient government research program inevtably will, and we can now discuss the glories of the Invisible Hand here on free-market forums such as Compuserve, Prodigy, and GEnie.
Invisible Hand (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people just don't get it.
Governments are not inherently less efficient than corporations. Just go look at various private companies (big and small) they're not all lean mean super efficient entities. Far from it.
And it's not a matter of size. It's a matter of quality.
You can have good or bad quality government (whether big or small).
There have been a number of people who decided to make the sacrifice and go into civil service/go
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
The government exists to disburse funds for paving roads etc., not to directly employ those who do the work. It's the way of collecting the money, sharing the cost across the citizenry, avoiding the arguments about who pays for what and making sure that everybody can get the essential services. In my part of the UK, government hires contractors for just about all the work, so the private sector is happy.
If government didn't mediate the service work, imagine the arguments about who pays for which bit of ro
Re:Its simple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is surely a market for long lasting batteries, and as in the case of GM, companies have been investing heavily in new technologies. How is getting some public governmental research entity started going to be remotely cost effective and efficient, because we all know that government departments are the model of efficiency?
You've answered your own question. For profit corporations are not good research vehicles, because they are too efficient at raising profits. This means they will efficiently allocate resources to researching technology with obvious (near) immediate commercial returns. So yes, you'll get research on longer lasting batteries (if only so that they can be patented and kept off the market as long as possible), and GM, etc. However the areas of science which might be today's equivalent to the physics of electricity or of genetics will not be discovered by this kind of effcient R&D.
Corporate research is excellent at delivering technological improvements, less so at fostering scientific innovation.
Re:Its simple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In basic, the "Guvmint" exists to keep us safe and provide basic infrastructure. I would add in water, police, firemen... Oh, and the EPA, FDA, etc. we need those kinds of watchdog agencies.
Does the government own GM now? ... No. No it does not. It's just a big shareholder.
You seem to place great store in the ability of the "market" to innovate. You bash the government for being inefficient. Have you ever worked for a large company? Man.... Trust me, the government doesn't have a monopoly on being stupid and slow.
And so freaking what if government did open source a battery and undermined a companies research dollars? Really... so what? Who gave companies some kind of right? No one is guaranteed the right to profit.
I'm rather tired of this magic land where companies would do what's best for all of us due to the power of the "free market". You know what? The first thing most successful and large companies do is strangle the free market to death so they can retard innovation and competition. It's happened over and over again in pretty much every single industry I can think of. Don't go crying Commie on me... I love the theory of capitalism. It turns human greed into technological progress. It's awesome... but there has to be limits and consequences to the behaviour of large companies. And man, they do NOT need any protections!
Think of this... Big business pays almost no taxes. They create something, sometimes with government subsidies or loans. They sell it to us at a profit. Then they dump their waste into the public rivers. We pay for them to make stuff. We pay to get the stuff. Then we pay to clean up the waste from the process. W.T.F!
Oops... calm down... no ranting... It's ok..... Phew!
I love it when the government does research and puts the results out there. Everyone benefits and we all pay so very little for such a big gain. That's the magic of government. It doesn't have to be driven by the almighty Profit. It can do the right thing at a loss, just because it needs to be done. We all benefit, and our slice of the payment is so very tiny.
People whine about the inefficiency of the government, then they drive on the roads, enjoy the protections of police and firemen, use the public school systems, buy homes that aren't death traps thanks to building codes, reap the benefits of cheap shipping due to interstate highways..... etc etc etc.
ah, ah... calm... yes....
For my two cents, I would love to see the government do basic research in:
batteries and capacitors. We need this very badly.
infrastructure... build high speed rails so we can ship a house across the country for a nickel.
Power savings... Why isn't there an open source home design for builders to use? Seriously, something so simple....
I could go on, but those would be a nice start.
-Tony
Re:Its simple.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of government is to execute the collective will of society. We as a people decided to get together and made a contract to create this organization to take care of certain things for us. If the collective will is only to pave roads and protect the borders, then that's what it will result in. If the collective will includes things like, making sure people don't starve to death in the streets or die of easily curable diseases, then that's what will happen. As it is, most people in the US are interested in some sort of health care system, which is why all the major candidates had a health plan. If the will of the people includes funding science or landing on the moon, or enslaving blacks, then it tends to happen, for better or for worse.
Agreed on the Camaro.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think your forgetting the differences between state and local governments and the federal US government. Post roads is explicitly place under the domain of the US federal government where Fire and police services aren't. In fact, there are special rules that need to be followed before a US marshal or FBI agent gains legal jurisdiction over a violation of law.
All of this is spelled out in the constitution in which is outlines what the Federal government can do. The constitution wasn't designed to limit the
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Model T also had what, like 20 horsepower?
Now we can get 20MPG out of what, like 200 horsepower on something that weighs 2000 pounds more, is safer both to drive and less likely to kill pedestrians if it hits them (yes, they are engineered to be less pedestrian-fatal), start in cold weather, and generally run hundreds of thousands of miles. So remind me, where's the comparison here?
Oh, right. Back to reality. Research pays for itself more than investing in corporations. However, corporations have our societ
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or you can get 39.974 mpg (I converted Imperial gallons into American ones to arrive at this figure, the original is 53.3 miles per imperial gallon), from 95 horsepower, and that's without all the hybrid nonsense. Top speed of 115mph.
That's for a Mini One, of course. Costs under $20,000, so for the price of a Cadillac Escalade ($63,155 for a 403 horsepower 6.2L V8 engine), you can have three of them (dare I say, a red one, a white one, and a blue one? [wikipedia.org]), and still enough left over for a really bitchin' home
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You know, money given to the poor doesn't just disappear. The poor spend it, and actually spend more of their income than any other demographic. In fact, giving money to the poor is one of the best ways for a government to boost economic activity and help everyone.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The trade imbalance, however large, is not even close to our total economic output. The multiplier effect is still in play. The poor still buy American-made food, get their hair cut by Americans, and so on. Your argument is essentially that the poor disproportionately contribute to the trade imbalance, and even if that were true, the money supplied in the actual trade mechanics (and industrial design) would be significant.
Second, it's quite rich to claim the poor would just subsidize China when, really, the
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, the thought just dawned on me that you didn't see my OP as the sarcasm that it was. I'm not anti-poor as much as I was mocking our consumer sentiment that tends to value goodies more than people. I mean, if I read one more time about how plastic dashes are so fricking terrible that we can throw three million of our own fellow citizens out of work...
sigh. I respond below:
The trade imbalance, however large, is not even close to our total economic output.
The trade imbalance is actually much larger when
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it's become less direct than it was. Now all that research money is funneled through Monsanto ('cept they don't call it research). Monsanto's investments in politicians and ties to bureaucrats have paid off well.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Monsanto are one of a very small number of entities who scare the living crap out of me.
I have no idea about if/how the government are involved with their affairs. However, I do know that they control 70-100% of the United States' supply of certain crops. I also know that they own and control a technology that can produce 'sterile' crops that don't yield any seeds at the end of the harvest.
They've literally got the ingredients for a mad-scientist-plotting-to-take-over-the-world scenario. I'm no libertari
Re:Food Production (Score:4, Informative)
I'm something of a libertarian myself, and yeah Monsanto has way too large a share of the seed market for my comfort. Competition is always a good thing and the seed market could use more of it.
That said, let me see if I can do anything to reduce the scariness of Monsanto. First thing you need to realize is that they do have significant competition. Pioneer Hi-bred and Syngenta, the number two and number three companies in the seed business (and to a lesser extent Dow and Bayer) are spending heavily on research to match Monsanto's genetic resources. Beyond those companies, there are still a number of significant companies focused on traditional plant breeding techniques. In critical crops such as grains Monsanto controls less than half of seed sales in the US, and a fraction of that worldwide.
The crops monsanto has the largest share of the market in are vegetables where total seed sales aren't enough to support much competition. Even for these crops, checks and balances exist, in the form of public university crop breeders, and the National Plant Germplasm System that preserves diverse crop lines from pretty much every crop species you could think of, so seeds are available from both these sources.
As for terminator technology (sterile crops), that's the one thing I don't get people worrying about. Sure Monsanto could deploy this technology, there are still going to be plenty for fertile crops around from their competitors, universities, and seed blanks, and by definition, sterile plants can't cross contaminate other plants. That'd be like inheriting sterility from your father. If your father were truly sterile you'd never have been born. (Recessive alleles make the picture a little more complicated, but the bottom line remains, sterile plants are always going to quickly and simply selected against by either natural or artificial selection.)
So in summary, while Monsanto has more control over the seed market than should ever be concentrated in a single company, this doesn't give them the power to take over the world/cut off our food supply. Other sources of crop seeds would simple expand into their market share. It gives them the power to charge too much for their products, treat farmers poorly, and keep technologies that could be live-savers out of the hands of the third world farmers than need them the most.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What do we eat in the meantime?
I'd imagine we'd eat exactly the same stuff we eat today.
Remember terminator doesn't create plants that don't produce food, it produces seeds that won't germinate. So the farmer can still sell his corn (or wheat or tomatoes, or kiwis for that matter), but if he plants it next year nothing is going to grow.
As far as the idea of cross contamination goes, lets address your fears by taking them to the most extreme condition imaginable, 100% pollen contamination. (We can't achieve 100% crossing rate even when
Figures to back up the claim (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly. The US is spending 2.6% of GDP on R & D. It is number two in the G7. Obama has said [cio.com.au] he wants to bring the spending up to 3.0%.
Re:Research is not the function of the Fed Gov't (Score:5, Insightful)
Private companies don't do basic research because basic research might or might not be profitable and if it might be profitable, then only in very long term. Private companies don't think in long term.
Also, stop bullshitting yourself in thinking that free market puts research dollars where they will be most beneficial. Free market researches everything what might bring a short term profit. It doesn't have to be beneficial at all and often it isn't.
Putting research dollars where they will buy the most votes, on the other hand, is doing research on what the public wants. And in many cases the public wants beneficial things.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The free market is completely useless at researching anything with a small chance of a long term payoff and no short term benefit.
The government can manage those because it doesn't give a shit if it burns through billions of dollars with no result in site.
Of course in the US the constitution doesn't allow* the Federal Government to do that work anyway, so this should be irrelevant. Of course since the constitution is ignored completely no one cares.
With the rather large exception of military research which