I find it very funny that this article came up after my recents posts today.
Obama has to come to a desition, he recently gained access to new documents and information he havent been able to get his hands on because it was not in the hands of the goverment.
Hopefully he has made up his mind very soon and will tag along amongst the european countrys who has opened up theyr hidden files...
Science is a way of doing things.
It is not controlled by Obama or any other government. You, me, industry and the Catholic Church can all do science if they choose.
There is a problem with the intermediaries who control research monies taken from the general population. These folks seem to have a big streak of the tax thief in them. They feather their own nests as illustrated in Britain recently.
Unfortunately our so called democracies seem prone to unacceptable influences.
I dare say if we trimmed the resources that fell through the hands of the tax thieves we might find enough individuals (and others) who would invest some of their increased resources for research. (I wouldn't depend on it though!)
It's not a great system. If you want to change it you probably can make some impact.
I think you meant to say "Unfortunately our so called humanity seems prone to unacceptable influence."
The real issue here is that universities have no business conducting anything other than basic research. The only reason they are given is because they exploit a massive number of unpaid skilled laborers in the form of students.
Research should be done in research institutes like Fraunhofer. Academic research is inefficient, prone to faking results in favor of funding and violates basic labour laws. It's a flawed system that is failing.
I have given up trying to make coherent sense of what you are saying; it is just a set of unsubstantiated postulates.
Just to clarify my own position: I think all scientific research must be independent of private funding; business interests can not be allowed to distort science, it is far too important for that.
I'm sorry you're unable to grasp basic concepts.
There's no way to make it any simpler than this:
Academic research is an abomination that uses slave labour.
Do you disagree?
its not slave labor if the laborers get something in return
sure the students don't get paid money but they learn important skills that are much more difficult to teach in a classroom. These students are learning to be scientists, scientists do experiments, therefore the students need to learn how to preform experiments either by A) doing experiments or B) sit in a classroom as some guy explains how to do an experiment.
Also, to be employed as anything other than a high school science teacher, it is important for any scientist to publish. Doing experiments like these allow students to get their names out in the field and hopefully land a decent job.
So if you have a better means to educate scientists id love to hear it, but frankly this method is the most effective one i've seen
Too many PhDs (*and* academics) overate themselves. Just because one is a sponge of knowledge, application of that knowledge may be beyond them. Face it, some people are better off not doing PhDs and should get a job.
What tends to happen is that these PhDs become disgruntled librarians or similar ever carping about their pay grade not being as high as some teenager.
In organisations I've come across these type of people drag it down and depress everyone.
"Educated beyond their ability".
Exactly why research should be handed over to professionals.
Its true, I was one of them. Got a PhD, but thats just a paper! ...got kids now but no house...
Im sorry but I have to disagree... It is not slave labour! I get a damned decent stipend (4k above the national average) and I am doing Molecular Genetics. PhD students will one day become professionals in their own right but until that day they are strictly moderated by a PI.
So how do these scientists think they should get funded? By forcing the populous to fund their lifestyle and lifestyle pursuits? Next the Arts will insist they are important and want more, then the Sport brigade, then this, then that.
Mankind has been able to move itself out of the primordial swamp by free-thinking people utilizing the free-market to decide what they want to spend their own money on.
Perhaps these state slush funded scientists should have a commercial bent and then use THEIR OWN MONEY as a legacy to a university or research institute instead of lobbying and then stultifying progress with the monopolistic state funded system.
It is not obscene that 10billion has been wasted on just ONE particle accelerator to tell us that the universe is made of string? Or 100s billion on nuclear power since the early 50s and no clean solution in sight (ie fusion).
What of the Burt Rutans of this world who are only now just being able to muscle in on big science once investors have seen all the stagnation and waste that a state monopolized system (like NASA) has caused.
The free market = multiple sources of investment, competition and tearing down of elitist Ivy League cliques that hog all the funding money.
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And how would you know finding out now the universe is made of strings isn't going to get us the clean solution for nuclear energy in the future?
Science doesn't work that easy, you can't just make progress in the fields wich are economic the most interesting, while you neglect related topics from which no profit is to be made on a short term. Thinking like that would only slow down science, or even stop it.
Wrong assumption. You're assuming there would be no clear-sky type of research or basic research if there wasn't an incompetent organization of criminals at the top that expropriated part of your income to spend it however it feels like.
This criminal gang forces the general public(at the point of a gun if sufficiently resisted) to fund among other things environmentally destructive and imoral corn ethanol. Useless wind turbines. Pointless wars in far off countries fought for ever-shifting reasons and against ever-shifting adversaries. Culture. bank bail-outs. Housing and tech bubbles. A broken patent system that stiffles innovation and infringes on the property rights of those afflicted by it(e.g. you're telling me what kinds of programs I may code using my computer, whether or not I have any prior knowledge of the patent, many of which are frivolous like digital waveguide synthesis or one-click online shopping). Farm subsidies. Cartellization of industries through deceptive use of unnescessary environmental and safety regulation.
If you got rid of all this junk people would have more wealth to spend as they please and more importantly they would face the fact that they are in control and they will have to fund the science they would like to see happen.
Currently most people tend to think of the state as an omniscient, benevolent, god-like creature. This is the wrong mental model of government. The correct model is the Department of Motor Vehicles with some rent-seeking and graft sprinkled on top.
So no profit is to be made in the short term, this does not mean that no one would invest in the long run.
You know what might be more important to people rather than finding out how the universe functions? Material items, cars, etc, and it's their prerogative to choose that over science. Of course this website is dedicated to science because it is awesome, but the article is absolutely biased. It's quite possible someone doesn't feel the need to invest in this research, and they should be allowed that choice. Public money comes from somewhere, and you hurt others by denying them their choice.
If science slows down, so be it. Science is not my personal god that must have everything devoted to it, unlike many
And how do you know that it does?
Shall we turn over 100% of GDP for the whim of the scientists working at universities or use the free-market, due diligence tests and hard commercial reality to fund the people in start-ups?
"So how do these scientists think they should get funded? By forcing the populous to fund their lifestyle and lifestyle pursuits? Next the Arts will insist they are important and want more, then the Sport brigade, then this, then that."
Erm... The Arts generally don't get much, but then again they don't really need much... Paper isn't very expensive. And the "Sport brigade" makes billions of dollars. So what are you talking about, exactly?
"Mankind has been able to move itself out of the primordial swamp by free-thinking people utilizing the free-market to decide what they want to spend their own money on."
Did Einstein utilize the "free-market"? Did Maxwell? Did Beethoven?
Don't be so quick to criticize - you owe these people because they created your modern world. And they didn't do it for profit. Would Einstein have managed to come up with relativity if he were working for some company? Who knows.
Einstein worked in a Patent Office in Geneva.
So what have these state subsidized "professionals" done lately over the "amateur" scientists? Snuffing it the competition with their ivy league arrogance and hogging the funding base.
Oh yes, Beethoven was the first composer not to rely upon Aristocratic patronage - he had to earn his living.
Also - government minister to Michael Faraday "I don't understand this electricity thing" Faraday "Ah yes, but you'll be wanting to tax it one day".
All I heard was "FREE MARKET ADAM SMITH'S MAGIC HAND BLAH BLAH BLAH".
Back in the days, research didn't cost much. But now in physics and biotech, it can be very expensive. With free market, what you get from the pharmaceutical industry is lucrative lifestyle drugs that you take every day for all your life. With public funding, what you would get is vaccines or preventive treatment that cost next to nothing and prevent you from getting the desease in the first place. In economics terms, that's called market failure.
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And the socialist planned economies gave you a miracle pill that you took only once and never needed to eat again?
The reality was food queues, rancid rotted bread and cabbage.
Can you brainwashed Americans get your facts straight for once? Socialism != Communism !!
The majority of the northern European states are socialist democracies, and doing very well thank you very much.
Besides, "free market" theory is just as flawed and unrealistic as communism as a theory.
It's just that what we pretend is "free market" capitalism, but really isn't, kinda works.. most of the time.
Have you forgotten that the populous has been forced to bail-out free-market industries that couldn't balance their own books? Or the populous has now been forced to provide (fund) bonuses to the very people who caused bankrupt institutions? People have "come out of the swamps" not through free market, but through the efforts and ideas of a minority of often brave men and women under many government systems; monarchies, feudal systems, dictatorships, theocracies (one of the least free systems). Gee, drag out a history book. Russia and China have both done in decades what the US took 200 years to accomplish; before you point out the human costs, I may add that the human costs of American imperialism has been enormous..drag out a history book. What is truly obscene is the billions and billions that have been spent destroying people (wars) and economies (war and occupation by agencies such as the IMF). Let us not forget who has stood in the way of clean energy..oil, coal and tobacco industries which are the results of your unregulated free-market stance. The free-market=accumulation of money in the hands of a few at the expense of the many= the wants of the few taking over the needs of the many. State monopoly or big business monopoly? Cuba has one of the best research and development programs in the world. Partcipatory democracy, which I see very little of today, is what makes any democratic system work for the people, by the people and of the people. The problem is not about science, it is about people who give up their democratic powers by being silent about things that matter. It is about not knowing historical data but following dogma, political or religious. It is about oligarchy worship and not knowing that there is no such thing as democracy under a dictatorship and especially if that dictatorship is difficult to recognize in the form of companies, CEO board of directors, and the under 10 families that dictate the economies( and wars) of the world. Silence artists, scientists, intellectuals...you silence everyone..and silence is accomplished in our world, at this moment, by no funding and under-funding.
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your scary lady. The only reason Russia & China took only 20 years to get where the U.S. is is because the U.S. financial system working in cooperation with the U.S government funded the development of both countries so that they could be a part of the developed world. As for Cuba's great research and development, what have they developed?
The bail-out occurred in the states by social engineering: loans were given out to those who couldn't afford it so that politicians could win votes.
Then the credit reference agencies gave AAA ratings to bad financial products.
ALL HAIL MAMMON!
I saw this post comming the moment I read the article's title. Yet another undereducated anonymous American read Atlas Shrugged and is now an expert on everything. Science? All about profit. Human History? All about profit.
It's sad that in these people's minds, doing anything that does not turn a quick profit is 'socialism' and is a terrible boogeyman waiting to destroy us all, despite the success of Eurpoean open-democracy socialism which is starting to eat our lunch. Look at any Scandinavian nation - they are healthier, fitter, happier, more free AND more economically competetive than the good-ole hyper-capitalistic USA that has turned inefficiency, waste and profit into a religion.
Nothing is apparently worthwhile unless it is making some captain of industry enough cash to buy a new yacht.
Truth be told, our forefathers and leaders during our 20th century golden age knew the best system is a blend of socialism and capitalism to allow the benefits of competition and innovation while safeguarding the people from the mindless and soulless greed that would build a new form of medieval tyranny on a mountain of dollars and the backs of the people.
If you were to put down your Self-Serving-Capitalist-Propaganda-Ayn-Rand-Bible (it's true, look up Ayn Rand's motivations in an actual history book), and read "The Wealth of Nations" you would discover capitalism works because of competition. Destroying competition through deregulation which legalizes monopolies is the opposite of the free market Adam Smith envisioned. Using the government to protect 'capitalists' from losses by way of stealing tax dollars from the American people is in no way, shape or form a free market. Our functional capitalist society with its free market is no more, now we live in a Plutocracy where the only motivation of business and government is providing as few goods and services as possible in exchange for stealing the money of the largest portion of the population as possible and gifting it to the people who need it the least. This dysfunctional theft-state is hardly a good model for any kind of progress, let alone science.
Would you rather have a cure for drug resistant TB or Malaria, or would you rather see a more profitable erectile dysfunction drug whose sole purpose is a new patent and billions in profit?
Our system is designed to make the wrong decisions when faced with any decision between human wellbeing and profit.
You people keep crying and whining like we are some nation that spends money protecting and caring for the working people at the expense of the wealthy! We've been doing preciesly the opposite for decades now. America is at the pinnacle of deregulation and wealth concentration now, and as a nation we are at an historic low point by nearly any measurement immaginable outside of corporate profit and stock prices (and even those are down). SHOCKER - you can't spend decades trying to destroy the livelyhoods of your customer base and expect to sell product. Your corporate-pimped half-ideology has now been tested and it has failed. Wake up and smell the suffering.
Nickernacker, I believe we have crossed swords in the past over climate issues, but I totally endorse every word of your comment. A good example is the debate in the USA at the moment over health care. It seems corporate interests have been very successful in persuading the populace to vote in favour of their least best interest. We in the UK sit and watch in amazement as the most outrageous lies are told about our National Health Service, and the gullible audience lap up every word of it
Nickernacker, though meaningless, my concurrence with your post is also complete. I suspect that a point will come when the people who agree with this sentiment will become more active. We may have felt that some small step in that direction was being taken in 2008, judgment reserved, but will it take a 1776- or 1789-like event to evince such a shift? If so, only by force of thinking and reasoning with your opponent can such an accomplish be made.
Yes, the "free-market" got us out of the primordial swamp. Seriously? Another thing that strikes me as completely insane: NASA wastes money, but you don't mention the US military?
What on Earth is the deal with Free Market fanatics? I thought that religion had died along with creationism, but I guess there are always diehard believers that can never let go. After all it took centuries for the geocentric view to go away, the market oriented view will hopefully fade the same way. Creative minds, a must for science, work best if unfettered by pressure to produce a particular result, therefore scientist must be free from market forces. No one knows where a new seemingly useless discovery might lead to. Einstein worked for a patent office, but this was not for love of the free market, he was after all a socialist. He wanted a job that did not demand much of him, a job he could easily ignore and freely think about the things he cared about. Things that were not profitable and uterly "useless" at the time. That was a different world. Today private corporations would be breating down his neck constantly asking; "anything profitable yet?" The essence of the free market is to concentrate on the profit motive only, at the espense of everything else. There is no basic research, or knowledge for the sake of knowledge. There is only profitable research, and knowledge that can be marketed, NOTHING ELSE. If something does not return immediate profit then it is discarded. Having an Einstein half assing through a job in a corporate world? forget about, even if he is about to split the atom
Free-market as in economic theory free market? It's a flawed concept, which is just as unrealistic as communism!
All the companies in your so called "free market" are only interested in making profit, and the only way to make a profit is by controlling a market, which goes against the very principles of capitalism because it destroys competition and raises barriers to entry to the market.
Uncontrolled "free" markets only breed monopolies, which are just as bad as government when it comes to inefficiencies.
Don't forget that it was science which dragged your sorry ass out of the "primordial swamp" into the digital age.
And science almost never goes in a straight line, so non commercial research is -necessary-.
The World Doesn't Owe Me A Living
Tue Nov 10 15:15:44 GMT 2009 by GroovyJ
http://members.shaw.ca/groovyj/
Actually, for the vast majority of history, there was no free market whatsoever. Scientific inquiry was advanced by people who had plenty of free time and resources, and were curious about stuff. The idea of a free market is only a bare few centuries old.
I don't particularly trust the government, it's true. They need to be watched like hawks. The key, though, is that the people have the power, if they choose to exert it, to watch the government like hawks, and to step in and control it if necessary. By contrast, dealing with privately owned businesses the average person has no power at all, no control whatsoever. Private business acts in the narrow, short term interests of a tiny percentage of the population.
Failure by government to advance the interests of the people is the fault of the people. Failure by business to do so is, well, kind of the point. Business is not supposed to advance knowledge, or investigate the mysteries of the universe, or improve the quality of life of human beings. If it does so, it does so purely as a biproduct.
The free market = a tiny (1%-ish) investor class controls everything, and all economic activity exists ultimately to serve their ends, regardless of the costs to everyone else. There is no advantage to replacing ivy league cliques with billionaire cliques. Indeed, it is conceivable that I might, through diligent study, join an ivy league clique. The same can not be said of the ultra-rich clique.
Until we get the commerce out of government (the U.S. government, at least) you'll never get it out of science. It's a positive feedback loop of the worst kind.
The problem is that science can't run independantly of business and corporate interrests in these times. Sadly scientists can only be funded by investors, because no/few lone scientists could fund themselves to do their research...
this leads me to believe that some scientific inventions are pushed under the covers to prevent certain industries from collapsing.
Let's say for instance that a revultionary device was created to cure all diseases, completely different from chemical methods.
Then this device would never get comercialised simply because it would ruin the pharmacutical giants.
Imagine scientific breakthroughs that would produce cars not needing a drop of oil...the oil companies would fail...
Also mention in the artical alternative methods of aggriculture; cheaper, safer,...-hence become less profitable...
And it is the profitabliity of inventions and scientific breakthroughs that at the end determine if they become a reality or not...in a sad way economics 'hinders'/ influences technological evolution...
You seem to believe in an evil world Mark.
When the wants of a few are more important than the needs of the many, then yes, it is an evil world. We in the wealthy nations just don't see it, blinded as we are by Brittany Spears, Survivor and the next Bowl game. What is happening across this globe is horrific....we just don't see it looking from our doorstep, nor do most of us actually care. We don't see that our luxurious lifestyle has doomed the greater populations of the world to obscene poverty and to resource wars carried out in the name of "freedom" when it hasn't a thing to do with freedom..it's about resources and making a select few very, very wealthy. What Mark suggests is a world with a conscience...I don't see much of that in Brittany Spears, Survivor, the Bowl games or in a conference of CEO's figuring out out to scam the popluance out of hard earned money and in some cases, their lives. It IS and evil world in many ways.
Stephanie I agree. Due to the numbers of the ordinary people who crave after ordinary things, wealth can end up in the hands of the extremely untalented and fickle.
I can imagine some Dragon's Den (show BBC tv pitting entrepreneurs against hard-nosed investors) scenario of Professor Such and Such "Please Britney I've got 5 research fellows and 10 PhD students to fund for this research into xxx" - "Yes but Prof, will it make my bum look big hee hee hee".
But the above scenario is not much different than maverick inventors going to government and asking for grants against the stultified, old-school tie, Not-invented-here mindset civil servants.
Idiots to the left, idiots to the right.
At least with a free-market system it is not a MONOPOLY where only one person/thing (THE STATE) has or is allowed to have any wealth.
"Fine, you don't like what's in my presentation, I'll go down the road".
"this leads me to believe that some scientific inventions are pushed under the covers to prevent certain industries from collapsing."
Sinners to the left, sinners to the right. I agree.
What about someone working in a "skunk-works" or garden shed solving the energy crisis or a later day Einstein (with a day job) unifying the forces of physics. Dontchafink the people at ITER or CERN would be miffed?
At least in the free-market system you can always go somewhere else. You offend the politburo you're broken and off to the gulag.
OOOOOoooo. Government funding of high level science is only a hairsbreadth away from a system of secret police and gulags.
Please spare us the typical right-wing empty headed fearmongering. There are government systems, and there are economic systems. They are not neccessarily the same thing. There are many capitalist nations that are despotic or fascistic. Their are many liberal democratic socialist nations. France, Sweden and even Canada do not dissapear any of their people because they are democratic nations built upon the law. Contrast this against our allies in Columbia and many of the middle east oil nations where wealthy capitalist dictatorships with barbaric histories of human rights violations and limited freedom dissapear (or worse) agitators all the time.
Please stop oversimplifying everything. It is a complex world in which we live, and a science magazine is a poor place to argue otherwise.
The oil companies also provide products to the pharmaceutical, packaging, agriculture, etc. industries, but they provide the lion's share of their profits to one company: GOVERNMENT!
Governments are preparing, or have already prepared, taxation schemes that charge by the mile to replace current fuel excise taxes.
Do you accept as inevitable the unending growth of government? Why or why not?
Actually, the percentage of taxes paid by corporations are at an all time low. Many pay nothing at all - look up the facts for a change. You know who pays the taxes they should? The working class - YOU.
Guess what? All those poor people (who are only one illness or unemployment poorer than you, I'll bet) that 'steal' your taxes? That's WAY WAY WAY less than the taxes you pay in subsidies, bailouts and corporate tax loopholes so that billionaires can rake in a few more billions that they will never be able to spend. Compare the $12.8 billion the government spent on socialist Medicare in 2008 with the $16.6 billion in oil subsidies and the $5-11 trillion in bank bailouts given away to the fat cats.
So next time you pay a record-high price at the pump for gasoline which is at record-high levels of supply, thank the oil industry for sticking you with their share of income taxes so they can focus on stealing record-high profits and paying out record-high bonuses to their executives.
Oh, and I do not accept as ineveitable the unending growth of the government. Someday, even you conservative folks will figure out that it's not the size of the government, but who it serves. If you have a system of 'democracy' built upon a lazy electorate and rampant corporate bribery (campaign finance), you are going to get bad, inefficeint and corrupt governance, no matter the size. We don't need to shrink or grow the government, we need to fix it. Plain and simple. Both major parties are slaves to monied special interests, and that won't change until we recognize the true source of the problem.
Well if all you rampant free marketeers think pure science is a waste of public money unless it turns a profit in 1 microsecond (time is money and we need to drive down these time margins) then the corporations can damn well fund their own research and us taxpayers can have the money back. If you want to know what will happen next, look up "Dark Ages"
Perhaps this is one of the problems with the publish or perish mentality. Do research and publish at any cost in order to advance and/or keep your job. Profs are judged by the amount of money they bring in to do said research - no matter where the money comes from.
Compared to government funds, corporate money can be easy to obtain. One thing leads to another...
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I couldn't agree more with this article, get the business filth out of public research, the sooner the better for all of us.
Completely Agreed
Mon Nov 09 19:20:59 GMT 2009 by John Adams
http://www.capmag.com
And will NS delete your post for calling law abiding businessmen "filth" whilst you loot (by "wealth redistribution") from the people who take responsibility for their own lives by due diligence and not FORCING anyone to fund their lifestyle/hobby pursuits?
Wealth redistribution is not necessarily a bad thing. Ask Warren Buffett, arguably the biggest capitalist around. Quote: repealing inheritance tax would be like "choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics".
Free-markets do not always lead to the most efficient allocation of resources.
So we can refuse to pay taxes for wars to win oil fields for the energy industry, bank bailouts, farm and energy subsidies, unbid government contracts, government bills which preclude competition to enlarge pharmeceutical profits or any other way that these AynRandian captains of industry steal our tax dollars?
Or maybe we can just pay what is historically or globally a fair profit for things like drugs or oil or healthcare insurance or mortgages where these poor, poor abused corporations illegally collude to form monopolies or trusts to make far higher profits?
Yeah, the people who would rather see 45,000 preventable American deaths (that's fifteen 9/11 attacks!)anually than pay slightly higher taxes are exactly who I want to see in charge of publicly funded research at the universities. Hopefully some useful gadget to convert poor people directly into petroleum is just right around the corner!
Look, Can We Just This Once Leave Out The Arguments That Commerce Is The Only Consideration?
We've rehashed this argument over and over again, and it always boils down to the people who want to discuss any issue, and the people who think that commerce, and above all profit, is the ONLY consideration.
We've heard from you over and over again on everything from global warming to health care, and now apparently scientific independance, and we KNOW what you folks think. Can the rest of us have one comment thread to discuss the issue without it turning into a referendum on unrestrained capitalism?
Look, Can We Just This Once Leave Out The Arguments That Commerce Is The Only Consideration?
Good comment. You have succinctly characterised a large part of commentary and debate in the US. Straw-man arguments that never resolve so real insights never evolve in the minds of the populace.
Orwell would be smiling (not).
Look, Can We Just This Once Leave Out The Arguments That Commerce Is The Only Consideration?
. . . and this is a discussion of the issue how?
The pursuit of truth for truth's sake, through a rigorous discipline of seeking to identify those things that can be known for sure, has broken down in the face of the huge sums of money that are necessary to do modern research, and the proven potential of new discoveries' ability to make godawful amounts of money, plus the apparently universal idea that if you aren't after money, you aren't serious. The great scientists were not after money, they wanted to figure stuff out, and they found ways to do it, often on a shoestring.
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You know that would be a bad thing too wouldn't it? If, say a windmill industry rep. were to fund research at a university and the results came in and were bad for the industry. Do you think the industry would give that university any more funding? Good thing those green industrial CEOs are all pure as the wind driven snow.
Yes, it is up to us to insure that if research results prove bad for the industry, then those results are not lost in the background. In your example, bird deaths are not insignificant, and are themselves the subject of increased study. It is our responsibility to utilize "stealth blades," and other technology that advances all 'green' goals.
Many professors are total money wh****... Pardon the crude language but it is true. Something is wrong when the negotiations of a grant from a company to a university take 3+ months and involve many lawyers. This is a fairly recent development, dating to the early part of this decade. How come universities were not royally ripped off by commercial grants for 50 years before that? It seems that the charter of a university has changed from one of education to trying to make a buck at (almost) any cost.
Forget about this, its nothing new. Nowadays, even CO2 is sold. Next will be O2! So pay when you breath. Total distruction of the world by the corporate empire is here!
And is Government not the ultimate corporation to end all others? That which has sole monopolistic rights over everybody and everything?
You'll find that the same people who run these corporations jump freely between the private and publics spheres.
At least with a capitalist system there is some disconnection between these legal entities allowing the little people justice over the suppressive control freaks.
Ok, I can see you're in love with your 'government is the ulitimate corporation' metaphor, but it's a flawed analogy. Unless you live in a classic oligarchy where a miniscule upper class (the board) makes all of the decisions for your nation. Believe me, the USA is getting there - but it was not designed that way.
Governments existed prior to corporations, so if anything, modern corporations are the result of the wealthy trying to set up fuedal pseudo-governments where they can run people's lives and steal their income without providing a fair service (see the health insurance industry), and our current governmental problems are the result of these wealthy would-be-fuedal-lords using their money to get the government to act against the interests of the public. They further this by flooding our airwaves with propaganda pitching a backwards world view where these businesses (who only and specifically exist to generate profit) are somehow the defenders of liberty - sowing dischord and confusion in the electorate to prevent the voters from cleaning up the system.
And the world is full of naive people. So we wind up with private citizens who will prostelytize nonstop about the wonders of the free market even in the teeth of massive societal failure at the apex of deregulation and conglomeration. We are living the failure of your ideology RIGHT NOW. Yet still our deregulated, corrupt and powerless (for example: our all-powerful federal government can't even re-regulate the derivatives market directly following a crash which very nearly took down the world economy!) government is blamed for all of our issues because it is not business friendly enough! Should they re-legalize slavery, too (oh, wait - that's what illegal immigrants are for...).
Believe me, science purely controlled by these business megalomaniacs will not further the human condition - and if you await a future filled with wonders besides skinnier televisions and slightly more effective erectile dysfunction pills, we need to make sure science retains some independence!
The arms and petroleum industries are major backers of research. Many major technologies came from the major wars. Therefore we need more wars. Therefore we need more rabid right-wing governments willing to "bring freedom" to others. QED.
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The bigger problem is a system that expects the Ph.D., a technical degree based on research, to spend his/her time writing proposals and beat the bushes for money to fund research. It's like asking your vicar to change your oil. The fact that managers think that's ok demonstrates how poorly science is managed!
A Bigger Problem
Wed Nov 11 01:29:21 GMT 2009 by GroovyJ
http://members.shaw.ca/groovyj/
Obviously. Managers generally have business degrees, which is basically a low end technical-school education which has been accorded the status of an academic education because it's what rich layabouts get, rather because it has any real content.
Business majors average far below math, physics, and philosophy majors on every test of management aptitude. The only business majors who score in the top ten on the GMAT are accounting majors.
We live in a world where total ignorance of an industry is considered no impediment to running it. It's perfectly okay to supervise a construction site without ever having worked on one, to run an academic department without a real academic qualification, to make off the cuff decisions based solely on a spreadsheet with no actual experience whatsoever of what those numbers represent. Indeed, we are supposed to believe that an MBA is BETTER qualified than a construction foreman to know how houses should be built, than a physicist to know how physics should be studied, and so forth...
It would be funny if I didn't have to live it.
had a thought a while regarding this issue...rather than patenting some major ground breaking scientific discovery or design fundamental to furthering science, release it "freeware" with an end user licence agreement stating that any advancements in science made through use of this information is inelegable to be patented and must be made available, as "freeware" under the same conditions of the original end user licence agreement.
had a thought a while *ago*....
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and you know nothing about oneirocriticism, you dont like my pipe dream, thats one thing, but i grew up on michael jackson, so to tell me i know little about human nature..
you wanna be startin somethin? he he
i'm convinced that if there were less commercializtion then we would likely have a lot more significant "break throughs" in many regions of science and technology. especially those related to alternates to fossil fuels. i can understand a little bit, a company funding research or something like that but, it should be illegal for said company to pull funding just because the results either disprove a product or show it harmful.
along those lines, i think it is way past time that the fda should start getting involved in vitamin and suppliments to make them prove their claims.
like the fda did with regards to stevia u mean? a herb used for generations as a natural sweetener which doesnt have any calories but as it threatens the "patented artificial sweetener with known health risks" business we will make it jump through more hoops than if it were a chemical food additive before we approve its use.
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The drive for profit in research could be a drive to be relevant and useful. The only way the pie (the economy) can grow is that if useful scientific discoveries lead to new innovations that raise productivity of both capital and labor. The true test of relevance of such discoveries and their applications is to measure whether multi-factor productivity is increasing in the sectors of the economy most closely linked with that research.
I think that real usefulness is a check on whatever bias might exist in the pursuit of funding. Surely funding is cut off if an endeavor is not profitable. And in the long run if an endeavor is not profitable then productivity will not increase.
Trying to separate scientific research from technological applications is a futile errand.
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