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The Moral Case for R&D.

  
  

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Lurid Archive
08:21 / 10.07.05
Celera piggybacking on this research is neither unethical or immoral.

Perhaps. But equally, it is hardly an advertisement for private sector ingenuity. Insisting that the absence of government funded research would be amply filled by private enterprise would be an assertion, rather than an evidenced claim.

Similarly, the idea that a "free-market" would operate without the need for monopolistic practices and patents is another assertion. And personally, I think that this is entirely the point. If knowledge and technology are to be controlled by corporations, unburdened by any government regulation, then I worry about the potential for abuse. Are we really to believe that a company would not use its resources in order to guarantee a return on an investment in the form of something like a patent? Certainly, jbsay, as you yourself concede, a corporate control of research would completely change the nature of the exercise,

technology advancements are irrelevant. Only when they are brought to MARKET are they relevant.

Because what value can something have beyond its monetary worth? *shrug* Research, knowledge and exploration are just as important, in my view, as art and an important part of culture. You can argue about specifics and levels of funding, of course, but we should not be drawn into a mindset that sees these things as expendable, even in the face of a noble cause like poverty reduction, largely because the dichotomy is a false one.

One last point, jbsay,

No one in industry or publicly held labs that I’ve ever encountered dispute Celera’s claims to speed outside of your book.

"My" book was written by John Sulston, (former) head of the genome sequencing lab at Cambridge. He was one of the key scientists involved in the Human Genome Project and is a Nobel Prize winner. I should have made that clearer, perhaps.
 
 
invisible_al
17:38 / 13.07.05
Weird that the the Geosensing uses for space technology haven't come up in this conversation, check Nasa's Enviroment and their Destination Earth info. Climate Change, Ozone Depletion, Deforestation, Ancients Droughts and Mini Ice Ages. All of this is a direct result of the money that was spent on getting a few guys to the moon and back.

And this is the main reason for India having it's own space program, they want to use space for stuff like a national medical network using satellite comms, also distance learning for the people (think Open University but for for 1 Billion people).

And regarding Space Ship One as an example of what private enterprise can do, yup I don't deny them their achievement but they've done what NASA did 50 years ago with the X plane project. It's taken this long for the technology to mature enough (CAD, Manufacturing processes, modern materials tech etc etc) to allow someone to do this for a fraction of what Nasa did it for. In some part these advances came out of the space program.

I think theres always a case for Government spending on Big Science, it's the kind of thing that the Market would never dream of doing, things like CERN or the new international fusion reactor, without a massive investment up front by government they just wouldn't happen.

It would be interesting to see if this sort of thing could be funded by public subscription, The Planetary Societies Cosmos One Solar Sail was an example of this but they've had two attempts end in failure and it's going to take them a while to get the money to try again.
 
 
astrojax69
21:50 / 13.07.05
Capitalists—true capitalists—never force people to buy their products. Voluntary exchange and so forth.

jbsay, this is patently absurd. so i expect you to tell the head of coca cola and mcdonald's this and they'll stop their pernicious advertising and cease all attempts to sway our buying habits and remain as profitable as they currently are?? not bloody likely.

the governments you speak of, on the other hand, are there due in some part to the will of the people and have the responsibility to develop our culture and our understanding in ways that free market forces probably would never conjure at. space exploration, astronomy, technologies and the like arising from these pursuits, have made more significant investments in the growth of our species than your capitalist notions ever will.

did the internet, for instance, arise from free market forces, or in some government funded research faciities in australia and england and america?? capitalism is good at propogating ideas, but rarely instigating them. thank your government for that.

godspeed, nasa.
 
 
jbsay
01:46 / 14.07.05
jbsay, this is patently absurd. so i expect you to tell the head of coca cola and mcdonald's this and they'll stop their pernicious advertising and cease all attempts to sway our buying habits and remain as profitable as they currently are?? not bloody likely.
advertising is not the same thing as holding a gun to your head, as per the tax agents that collect your money to fund NASA. You are free to stop watching TV (my personal choice) or build up enough mental fortitude to withstand their attempts at suasion


the governments you speak of, on the other hand, are there due in some part to the will of the people and have the responsibility to develop our culture and our understanding in ways that free market forces probably would never conjure at.
uh huh. That’s why voter turnout is so high.

Where do I vote to not pay anything to the government, and not receive any “benefits” in return? for starters, i'd prefer not to pay taxes to have a bunch of bureaucrats decide to bomb a bunch of innocent civilians in a country most americans can't even place on the map.

space exploration, astronomy, technologies and the like arising from these pursuits, have made more significant investments in the growth of our species than your capitalist notions ever will.
You are ignoring….pretty much all of industrial history. Nice try. I agree that space exploration, astronomy, and technologies are important. That the government a) should be doing them b) have done a good job c) could do them better than the private sector or d) should be allowed to force people at gunpoint to fund these activities is….debatable

did the internet, for instance, arise from free market forces,
Yes, actually. Who brought it to market? Technology by itself is irrelevant.

or in some government funded research faciities in australia and england and america??
just because the government is so massively large, and dominates R&D budget fundings as a result of this, does not mean that it a) could not be done in the absence of government or b) it could not be done more efficiently in the absence of govt. do you have any idea what $500bil will buy you on the free market? That is the amount of NASA’s budget that THE GOVERNMENT’S OWN AUDITORS CAN’T MAKE BALANCE.

capitalism is good at propogating ideas, but rarely instigating them.
I hope you are kidding
 
 
jbsay
02:01 / 14.07.05
Celera piggybacking on this research is neither unethical or immoral.

Perhaps. But equally, it is hardly an advertisement for private sector ingenuity. Insisting that the absence of government funded research would be amply filled by private enterprise would be an assertion, rather than an evidenced claim.

No empirical evidence is needed. A priori--the private sector has an incentive to get things done well. The public sector has an incentive to do things badly. Does this mean the private sector is perfect? No. fraud etc will still exist, as is human nature. It’s just that it is clearly better than the public sector. The public sector has no feedback mechanism to deal with failures. On the contrary, it feeds on failure.

If you put the exact same individuals in the private sector and the public sector, you will routinely get a better outcome in the private sector, just due to the incentive structure. For instance, in the private sector, if you have as bad an outcome as NASA (e.g., failure rate, accounting fraud, etc.), you will be out of business and your top management in jail. In the public sector, this attracts more funding (we’re not giving enough to NASA!). If a private firm were in charge of protecting the US, it would have gone bankrupt after 9/11. Instead, the government raised a massive new budget and passed sweeping totalitarian reforms due to their failure.

Not to mention the moral argument, which is that people do things freely on the private market but the public sector has only coercive force as its tool.



Similarly, the idea that a "free-market" would operate without the need for monopolistic practices and patents is another assertion.
No, it’s not. Read Rothbard on competition, monopoly and IP. There can be no monopoly without government interference. There is no need for monopolistic practices.

And personally, I think that this is entirely the point. If knowledge and technology are to be controlled by corporations, unburdened by any government regulation, then I worry about the potential for abuse.
They can be burderend by government regulation. Two laws: no force, no fraud. If a corporation violates either of those, feel free to have the govt send them to jail

Why are you not similarly worried about the potential for government abuse? Who is watching the watchers?

Are we really to believe that a company would not use its resources in order to guarantee a return on an investment in the form of something like a patent?
??? How can you guarante an ROI in the form of a patent if the government weren't involved?

Certainly, jbsay, as you yourself concede, a corporate control of research would completely change the nature of the exercise


define corporate control over research, and walk me through how this would change the nature of the excercicse


Because what value can something have beyond its monetary worth? *shrug*
No. Because if you can’t use the technology, it has no value TO YOU. Only when it is brought to market—i.e. available to YOU, does it have any value to you. Monetary worth is irrelevant. If you’d like me to walk you through the Theory of Money and Credit and why this is the case I’d be happy to. Money is irrelevant.


Research, knowledge and exploration are just as important, in my view, as art and an important part of culture.
no argument.

You can argue about specifics and levels of funding, of course, but we should not be drawn into a mindset that sees these things as expendable, even in the face of a noble cause like poverty reduction, largely because the dichotomy is a false one.
Im not arguing specifics. I’m saying: it will never work, regardless of funding level. These things are expendable. You can cut the GOVERNMENT budget. People value art, research, knowledge, etc. And they fund them privately. I personally fund them privately. And, if they were taxed less, they would have even more money to fund them privately.

"My" book was written by John Sulston, (former) head of the genome sequencing lab at Cambridge. He was one of the key scientists involved in the Human Genome Project and is a Nobel Prize winner. I should have made that clearer, perhaps.
I should make clear, that with the exception of John Sulston who Ive never spoken with, all the other Nobel Prize Winners and key scientists involved in HGP, TIGR, Celera, and other efforts that I’ve spoken with have privately admitted that Celera a) did a better job and b) due to competition spurred the government efforts on and c) used substantially fewer resources
 
 
jbsay
02:07 / 14.07.05
Just one quick point about the market not being able to deal with "big government projects".

1) THe market is quite good at dealing with long-tailed R&D that has no practical near-term payoff. From angel funding to VC to whatever.
2) Yes, the market would probably not fund a trillion dollars worth of open ended R&D. Although at first glance, this appears to be a failure, it is anything but. It simply means that there are CURRENTLY needs that are more urgent than the open-ended R&D. maybe it would be developing CAD/CAM that later makes the other projections eminently feasible in terms of time/cost/resources/etc

It would be easier to discuss this if people were familiar with the concept of Bastiat's Broken Window. Most economic fallacies stem from misunderstanding of this one simple concept.

http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
 
 
Lurid Archive
12:09 / 15.07.05
No empirical evidence is needed. A priori--the private sector has an incentive to get things done well. The public sector has an incentive to do things badly.

I think that this approach, where you repeatedly assert controversial claims which you feel no need to justify, is going to go down badly here. Debate, by all means, but don't treat Barbelith as a platform from which you can preach. Simply put, you cannot reasonable expect others to simply agree with your "a priori" claims, no matter how transcendentally self-evident you take them to be.
 
 
jbsay
21:23 / 15.07.05
i will summarize the a priori as best I can (but know that there are much more indepth studies of both the apriori and empirical sides if you are interested, so if you want full references to support these points by all means PM me).

The state will always produce a "worse" outcome than the free market for at least 4 reasons. The first 3 are value-free (i.e., I take no moral stance: I only analyze from the point of view of the government, its goals, and the means available to it to achieve these goals), the 4th is moral (it includes my own value system)

1) In a Free market, voluntary actions and exchanges mean that individuals "maximize" their utilities (pleasure/pain scale, if you will) ex ante. People act and exchange because they believe that by their action or exchange, they will reach a preferred state of affairs. People act because they believe the benefits of their actions will be superior to the costs. In an interventionist system (NASA) the situation is different. Because government interventions manifest themselves through commands and prohibitions, it necessarily implies that owners of the means of production are going to use these means in a way different from what they would do under the pressure of the market. Therefore, the coerced individuals are going to lose in utility as a result of the intervention, for his action has been changed by its impact. Interventionism necessarily creates conflicts of interests.

2) the second is the most deadly a priori attack. that is, the impossibility of economic calculation by the state. since there is no free market for the service (e.g. NASA) offered by the state, and the "exchange" is coercive instead of voluntary, you have no market price. The state is totally deprived of a free-market price system, and can not rationally calculate costs or allocate factors of production efficiently to their most needed tasks. without a price, which is the entire basis of the market, there is no way to efficiently allocate resources even from the viewpoint of the bureaucrats. the bureaucrats--no matter how smart, well-educated, or well-meaning--are economically blind. you will end up with rampant, chronic surpluses, shortages, and malinvestments due to this economic blindness. how do you know how much "NASA" to supply versus "homeless shelters" versus “food for the poor”? You have no idea, since there is no market price to signal to you where supply and demand should meet.

3) incentive structure and feedback mechanism
The market has a profit/loss mechanism. This serves two purposes. First, it incents managers and employees to do a better job, since they get paid more the more profitable the company (think stock options), they get fired if they don’t do a good job, and they are unemployed if the company fails (bankruptcy). in the absence of government intervention, those companies that best serve the needs of consumers will succeed and those that don’t will fail. This is a positive feedback loop.

The government has no such incentive or feedback mechanism. It faces no competition. If anything, it is a perverse negative feedback loop. Bureaucrats have no incentive to do anything efficiently. They are paid by the hour. They don’t really get fired if they fail. They don’t really get paid more if they do a good job. So they just do their job: nothing more, nothing less.

The more the government fails, the louder the cries to “do something” and throw more money (good money after bad) to solve the problem that the government typically created in the first place. There is literally not a budget in the entire federal government that would pass a GAAP accounting audit. If you don’t believe me, go ask the GAO. Who gets fired because of this? Who goes to jail? Can NASA go bankrupt for ineptness? Never. If the schools were privately run, everyone involved would have been fired for failure (if you’d like I can refer you to books and statistics that show the precipitous drop in education and literacy cine the govt took over). Instead, our government, in its infinite wisdom, decided that teachers are UNDERpaid. No one fired, no bankruptcies. More money thrown at the problem. The worse the schools do, the more they should be funded.

Governments can always tax, take on debt, or print money out of thin air to keep expanding despite doing a lousy job. They thus subvert the profit/loss and market mechanism. Businesses can not legally tax or print money out of thin air (counterfeiting). Businesses can take on debt, but their debt is not the same since it is not backed by the taxing power of the government, so it is more expensive (at least) for them to take on debt. If the business defaults on its debt, it is insolvent. Governments can’t technically become insolvent. They can print money to pay off their debt. That creates hyperinflation, but at least they paid the debt off (in worthless currency).

The state by definition has a monopoly on coercive force within a given region. This shelters state agencies like NASA from competition. NASA can always raise more money than a private competitor. No competition = no incentive to improve, lower costs, or provide better service.


4) moral reason
It is unethical of me to point a gun to your head, steal your wallet, and give the proceeds to my favorite charity (NASA). IF it is immoral and illegal on a small scale, it is immoral and illegal on a large scale. Whenever you say the “government” should fund something (NASA), remember that it is holding a gun to someone’s head, stealing their wallet (taxes), and funding that charity (NASA).

If you’d like to do an empirical analysis, compare the following statistics for government v. private
1) how many people have been slaughtered in wars, genocide, holocausts, etc
2) how many trillions of dollars have been embezzled, lost through accounting fraud, inflated away, fiat currencies destroyed, economies laid waste
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:27 / 16.07.05
jbsay, can I ask that if you want to make lengthy and repeated arguments for the supremacy of capitalism you do so in another thread? Either the old one or a new one, I don't mind which. Because at the moment you are posting long off topic posts which derail the thread.
 
  

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