[Rduke55]

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OK. You lost what little credibiltity you had with this post.
Yes, private science is crap compared to govt. funded science. Being a neuro type I have direct experience with this. You clearly have no idea what you are talking about here. Privitazation wil kill pure science.

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Why?

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Roads? Are you kidding me? Privatization would make driving ridiculously expensive.

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How so? Care to explain the assumptions you made and show your calculations? You do claim to be a scientist, don't you?

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How are tolls. etc. different from taxation?

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How is voluntary different from involuntary?

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Profit in road building?????!!!!?!?!?

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Again, would you care to explain the assumptions you've made and the calculations you undertook to arrive at your position? I offered to outline a system of private interstates, since you brought them up, so that you could analyze the merits for yourself. But it appears you would rather dismiss the subject out of hand.

Also, you are dangerously close to invoking the gratuitous punctuation rule.

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And I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. You're an ass for trying to call me out and FYPing my post to "I believe". I have a great deal of experience in both the academic sector and govt. funded research. Obviously you're misguided.

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I also have experience in both the academic sector and government funded research. I really wasn't trying to be a dick or "call you out" with the FYP. My apologies. That was a really stupid way to try to make my point, which was that I doubt that you've ever seriously considered what scientific funding would be like in the complete absence of coercive governmental sources. You're really just assuming that it would suffer. Much like you're assuming road construction would suffer, and probably the police, fire departments, health care, education, bakeries, and any number of other things that governments often monopolize.

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What are you, 16 years old? Anarchocapitalism? Grow up.

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Is this how you normally conduct your brand of science? Dismiss theories out of hand without any investigation at all?

But thanks for letting me know I needn't waste my time trying to actually present any ideas.

Have a nice life.

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OK, the 16 yo comment was out of line. I had just gotten back form a cognac tasting [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]
But your main retorts are "prove it" "where are your calculations", etc.
You never present your side. I didn't reject your points out of hand. I and some of my colleagues have experience with both public and private funding and drew a conclusion based on that, so don't be so quick to jump on that boat. That's lazy debating.

And if you compare publicly funded research (university, etc.) with for-profit research (biotech, drug companies, etc.) I can't believe that anyone would believe that the for-profits are doing better science. By any measuring stick - Nobel Prizes, citations, opinions of prominent field members, etc.
There's a huge issue now with scientists and even journals having problems getting all the data from studies the drug companies perform. The bottom line definitely affects science. Have we learned nothing from Johnny Mnemonic ?
All (or nearly all) of the major advances and paradigm shifting discoveries in neuroscience (again b/c that's what I'm most familiar with) have come from universities or other "non-profit" organizations funded by tax dollars.

For profit science really restricts exploration. I have considered what scientific funding would be like without the major government funding agencies and it would be scary. Basic science would all but disappear. Science would degenerate into the factory-line approach common to the biotech firms.

Please explain to me your theory on how you would fund science. And throw in the road thingy too.