Looking for fellow anarchocapitalists.

[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.

[pvn]

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And if you compare publicly funded research (university, etc.) with for-profit research (biotech, drug companies, etc.)

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Lots of university research is done with private funds. People endow universities despite government taxation, there's no reason to think such giving would *decrease* if taxation burdens were removed.

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I can't believe that anyone would believe that the for-profits are doing better science.

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Again, you're falsely framing this. It's not a "for-profit" vs. "University" debate. There is non-profit private research, and there is for-profit university research.

The debate is between government funding and private funding. And the fact that government has distorted the market does not prove that it's more desirable.

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Have we learned nothing from Johnny Mnemonic ?

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All I needed to know about the virtues of statism I learned from Johnny Mnemonic and the West Wing.

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For profit science really restricts exploration.

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How? Think about it. What's more restrictive? Some government bureaucrat doling out funds to selected projects, or private individuals doing whatever they want?

[Rduke55]

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Lots of university research is done with private funds. People endow universities despite government taxation, there's no reason to think such giving would *decrease* if taxation burdens were removed.

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I'd quibble with your characterization of "lots."
Private university funding does not come close to government funding (NIH, NSF, etc.).
And I'm not sure why you would think that we could come close to current levels of funding if taxes and the govt. funding agencies were removed. Can you explain why you think so?

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There is non-profit private research, and there is for-profit university research.

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Agreed. But the overwhelming majority of science (especially that "high-level" science I was talking about earlier) is govt. funded.

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The debate is between government funding and private funding. And the fact that government has distorted the market does not prove that it's more desirable.

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I'm not sure what you mean here.

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What's more restrictive? Some government bureaucrat doling out funds to selected projects, or private individuals doing whatever they want?

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Actually, the govt. bureaucrats handing out the grants for NIH and NSF are scientists themselves.
Private individuals in this case are often motivated by profit. Basic science does not turn a profit when compared to the "factory-line" style of science common in the firms.

Again, I am talking about the basic science that makes the big advances, not the factory-line making drugs slightly more effective.

[pvn]

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And I'm not sure why you would think that we could come close to current levels of funding if taxes and the govt. funding agencies were removed. Can you explain why you think so?

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Is there a need for this research? If so, why would it not get funded? If someone finds it valuable, they will pay for it. If they don't find it valuable, why should it be forcibly funded?

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There is non-profit private research, and there is for-profit university research.

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Agreed. But the overwhelming majority of science (especially that "high-level" science I was talking about earlier) is govt. funded.

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You keep harping on this point, but the fact that government funds the "overwhelming majority" of science has nothing to do with determining if that is the best way to do it.

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The debate is between government funding and private funding. And the fact that government has distorted the market does not prove that it's more desirable.

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I'm not sure what you mean here.

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I mean you keep making the same circular argument: the government funds most research, therefore the government should fund most research.

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What's more restrictive? Some government bureaucrat doling out funds to selected projects, or private individuals doing whatever they want?

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Actually, the govt. bureaucrats handing out the grants for NIH and NSF are scientists themselves.

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Yes, and they're handing out someone else's money, which means they don't feel much pain when they fund bogus, unneeded projects.

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Private individuals in this case are often motivated by profit.

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Often? How about almost always? Profit is the best motivation possible. What better way is there to determine what people value?

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Basic science does not turn a profit when compared to the "factory-line" style of science common in the firms.

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Because they can't compete with the distortion caused by government funding. That doesn't justify government funding, it only highlights the results. The only argument you can build on this fact is a "might makes right" argument.

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Again, I am talking about the basic science that makes the big advances, not the factory-line making drugs slightly more effective.

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So your contention is that the market places no value on this "basic" science? If the government didn't fund it, it just wouldn't get done at all?

I can just see Edison in his workshop: "I'd really like to invent a lightbulb, but since the government hasn't funded any research into electricity, I just can't do it."

[Rduke55]

OK, we just have different philosophies. Profit is definitely not the best motivator for good science. What about gene patenting? One of this countries greatest scientific advantages is the free exchange of ideas. That type of patenting definitely screws that.

Yes basic science would suffer if you took the govt. out of funding. Basic science is where the big advances get made. However, it's often difficult to forsee profit or benefit at the time. Applied science will always be more profitable than basic.

Look at it this way. Arguably the biggest advances in neuroscience, Hodgkin and Huxley's work on the squid giant axon, Ramon y Cajal's neuron doctrine, etc. did not have an effect on human health (ar any profit, to word it differently) for quite a long time (decades) after they were done. Many at the time did not see the benefit of them performing these experiments.

I really don't see how you can just say that private funding would be better than govt. funding. You keep saying I'm harping on those points but I have a solid track record of progress behind my observations, you have some strange idealist conjecture.

[pvn]

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Profit is definitely not the best motivator for good science.

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What is?

Note also, without government regulation, you're still free to pursue (and fund) "unprofitable" research. You just can't depend on thuggery to come up with the money.

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What about gene patenting? One of this countries greatest scientific advantages is the free exchange of ideas. That type of patenting definitely screws that.

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Completely seperate issue. In fact, if you're for the "free exchange of ideas," then getting rid of government intervention is probably in your best interests.

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Yes basic science would suffer if you took the govt. out of funding. Basic science is where the big advances get made. However, it's often difficult to forsee profit or benefit at the time. Applied science will always be more profitable than basic.

Look at it this way. Arguably the biggest advances in neuroscience, Hodgkin and Huxley's work on the squid giant axon, Ramon y Cajal's neuron doctrine, etc. did not have an effect on human health (ar any profit, to word it differently) for quite a long time (decades) after they were done. Many at the time did not see the benefit of them performing these experiments.

I really don't see how you can just say that private funding would be better than govt. funding. You keep saying I'm harping on those points but I have a solid track record of progress behind my observations, you have some strange idealist conjecture.

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Again, nobody disputes that government funding has produced results. That *still* does not prove that it's the *best* method. You don't see how I can say private funding would be better? I posted a detailed argument about how private funding is better in efficiency, objectivity, and morality. Can you at least offer a counter argument before demanding more?

[Rduke55]

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Again, nobody disputes that government funding has produced results. That *still* does not prove that it's the *best* method. You don't see how I can say private funding would be better? I posted a detailed argument about how private funding is better in efficiency, objectivity, and morality. Can you at least offer a counter argument before demanding more?

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Where? All you keep doing is saying that I haven't proven that the current way is better than your fantasy land. Like I said to boro, I think it's up to you to prove the advantages of your system.
I think we have to take the same issue borodog and I took. You'll never convince me you're right and I'll never convince you that I'm right because of basic philosophical differences. I have a different view on taxes, science, etc.
Agree to disagree.

[Borodog]

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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.

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I was never asked to present "my side." You made certain assumptions, (to paraphrase, "So there's not going to be any basic science or interstates?") and when I tried to point out that these were simply assumptions, you pretty much flipped out on me.

And as far as I can tell, I did present a small line of reasoning, which you ignored. Namely that fundamental science is valuable, and in a free market capital will flow to it. I asked you what mechanism would prevent this. I'm still waiting for an answer.

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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 ?

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The only thing I learned from Johnny Mnemonic is that I wanted my $6.50 back. But be that as it may, I believe you are making a couple of errors.

1) You conflate "privately funded" with "for profit." This is not always the case. Most "not for profit" science has been monopolized by governments.

2) You are comparing extant coercively funded science with extant privately funded science, saying that privately funded science "sucks" in comparison, and extrapolating that all science would suck if there were no coercive funding of science. Yet you offer no justification for why the level of funding of private science must be constant in the two drasticly different environments. I contend that there are two simple arguments that demonstrate that this is not a fair comparison, one for we'll call it "for profit" science, and one for "not for profit" science, i.e. basic science for which you may argue there is no strict profit motive, perhaps astrophysics. Although even this I would argue with; I think there is profit in even the most inapplicable of sciences. That's a side point though.

The first argument is the capital argument stated before. Regardless of whether there are issues with getting drug companies to share their research data, you cannot argue that tens of billions of dollars of private capital flows to private companies doing research for profit, including drug companies, biomedical device companies, medical equipment research, prosthetics research, medical imaging research. Private funding exceeds government funding in all of these areas. Claiming that the science done by these companies "sucks" is unjustified.

The second argument goes to the idea of "not for profit" science, let's call it. I.e., fundamental science that you may argue cannot be "sold" for an immediate profit. For example:

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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.


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Basic science would not "all but disappear." There is a demand for basic science. That you cannot see this startles me. If there were no demand for basic science, do you think politicians would fund it? No, they would not. The existence of a large number of lay-sources of science information demonstrates the demand that the general public has for basic science. Many of these sources are even profit driven. I.e., people are already paying out of their own pockets for basic science. The very existence of people like you and I demonstrate the public demand for science. There are thousands of research scientists doing basic science research. For every one of these people there is probably a hundred or a thousand lay people who are just as interested in what they are studying, but for any number of reasons didn't go into the sciences themselves. They can't do the research, but they still want to know. These are the consumers of science.

In addition, basic science forms the input to the for-profit science of the next decade. Often in many companies there is a short-term bias against investing in long-term research. This is produced by distortions in the profit motives of business due to government regulation, a topic too large in scope to go into here. Suffice it to say that if government regulation did not make current stock price more important than long-term profitability, corporate investment in pure science would be significantly higher.

Furthermore, private donations for basic science research are largely curtailed by the very existence of government funding sources. This is what I mean when I say basic science has been monopolized. There are a number of reasons for this, including the confiscatory level of taxation that leaves few people with excess funds to donate to neuroscience research for example, the "that's what I pay taxes for" mentality, and the institutionalization of the process for receiving hand-outs from the taxpayers' pocket.

Let's take level of taxation and the "this is what I pay taxes for" mentality. If you doubt the existence of these effects on private basic science funding, you could make an analogy with private charity. The is an incontrovetible inverse correlation between level of taxation and welfare and entitlement program spending and the level of private donations to charities for the poor. In the European tax-welfare states, charitable giving lies far below the level it does in the United States with it's relatively less intrusive and burdensome tax and welfare policies. Private charities in the US spend more charitable dollars helping the poor than do governments (all though governments spend more dollars total; the bulk of this simply finances the bureaucracy). Compare that with basic science in the US, which has been largely monopolized.

The other side of the coin is the fact that scientists are now addicted to government grants. There are private foundations, thousands of them, that could fund basic science research through grants, much like they fund charitable efforts and non-profit organizations. But they are in competition with a government till. Many, many government tills. And the process for sticking your hand out and receiving the public largesse has been fine-tuned to the point that many scientists spend an ever larger fraction of their time writing grant proposals. In effect because the government doles out all the money, private foundations cannot compete, and form such a small component of funding that they are not worth pursuing when I have all these government grant proposals to finish writing! This is the feedback process that has killed privately funded basic science.

It wasn't always like this, you know. Did you ever see the film Awakenings with Robin Williams? I believe it was set in the 1960s, although I could be wrong. There's a scene where Robin Williams makes an impassioned pitch to a group of wealthy donors to fund his research in . . . neuroscience, if I remember correctly. That wouldn't happen today. He'd just write a grant proposal. Private donors make up an ever shrinking fraction of the budget of prestigious research institutions.

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

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There's a few thoughts on science funding. The last thing I'd like to point out is that funding for science can only come at the expense of something else. So even though I think I've demonstrated several effects that would either a) drive private science funding in the absence of coercive government funding or b) are currently depressing private science funding relative to current coercive funding, I am not claiming a priori that the level of science funding would go up. It might even go down. I think it's impossible to say, as it is impossible to make quantitative. predictions. I can say this. There would be just as much basic science as the market demanded, and there is clearly a demand for basic science.

This has been a long post. I think I'll leave the discussion of private interstates until after I see if you flip out and start insulting me again.

Have a good one.

[Rduke55]

I said the 16yo comment was out of line and I'm sorry for it.
I really think you're the one that hasn't proved anything. Your entire argument is that there would be this magical land where everyone cares about science and gives tons of money to it. You offer no justification on why we should think that science will still be adequately funded, all you keep saying is that I need to prove why it wouldn't be. I think the onus is on you in this argument.

Are you seriously suggesting that it's better for scientists to beg rich people for money to run experiments rather than have a systemized source of funding in place?

I think it's agood thing that scientist aren't dependent on the largesse of people and their personal motivations.

[Borodog]

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I said the 16yo comment was out of line and I'm sorry for it.
I really think you're the one that hasn't proved anything. Your entire argument is that there would be this magical land where everyone cares about science and gives tons of money to it. You offer no justification on why we should think that science will still be adequately funded, all you keep saying is that I need to prove why it wouldn't be. I think the onus is on you in this argument.

Are you seriously suggesting that it's better for scientists to beg rich people for money to run experiments rather than have a systemized source of funding in place?

I think it's agood thing that scientist aren't dependent on the largesse of people and their personal motivations.

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This is getting tiresome. You are undebatable. I made many points in my post, and you sweep it aside with sweeping mischaracterizations of my statements.

Why don't you try quoting each of my points and responding to them in turn. State which ones you believe are fallacious. Point out where you might, heaven forbid, not disagree.

Here, like this:

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I said the 16yo comment was out of line and I'm sorry for it.

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Actually, you didn't say you were sorry for it. You said it was out of line and then gave an excuse. But apology accepted.

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I really think you're the one that hasn't proved anything. Your entire argument is that there would be this magical land where everyone cares about science and gives tons of money to it.

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No, I didn't. You see, this is what I mean by mischaracterization. I said that there are demonstrably people who care about science and would give some quantity of money towards it. If you think the is incorrect why don't you explain why? Instead, you twist my words into "everbody" and "tons of money." I highly doubt that you have this much trouble reading for comprehension, so it must be intellectual dishonesty. I also explained mechanisms whereby we might expect that both current levels of private funding for basic science are artifically depressed by the existence of coercive government funding, and the corollary that private funding would likely go up in the absence of coercive sources. You ignored these points. If you think they are incorrect, why don't you explain why?

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You offer no justification on why we should think that science will still be adequately funded, all you keep saying is that I need to prove why it wouldn't be. I think the onus is on you in this argument.

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Define "adequately." I know of no government programs that are "adequately" funded. At least that's what I hear all the time. All government programs seem to be "chronicly underfunded." Is "adequate" and objective or subjective concept? If it's subjective, how can you possibly claim that whatever level of funding the market would provide would be "inadequate?" Inadequate for who? For you? Why is the onus on me, who claims that the market will provide just as much funding as the market requires, instead of you, who claims (without any explanation whatsoever) that funding would be "inadequate," whatever that means?

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Are you seriously suggesting that it's better for scientists to beg rich people for money to run experiments rather than have a systemized source of funding in place?

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Beg? "Systemized source of funding?" Yes, I think it would be better to fund your work through voluntary donations than put a gun to someone's head and rob them.

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I think it's agood thing that scientist aren't dependent on the largesse of people and their personal motivations.

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Of course you do. Why don't you say what you really mean? "I think it's a good thing that the government takes money away from people so that I can do what I like, without having to bother convincing anyone that they should voluntarily support my work."