[561] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
MIT & private research funding (happy, Wally? :-)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sourav K. Mandal)
Sun May 6 18:18:01 2001
Message-Id: <200105062216.SAA03838@dichotomy.dyn.dhs.org>
From: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
Reply-To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
To: mit-talk@mit.edu
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Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 18:16:51 -0400
"Alex Coventry <alex_c@MIT.EDU>" wrote:
> Yes, there have been deplorable, disastrous instances of forcing people
> to contribute to US efforts. It's silly to tar other wildly successful
> and less intrusive forced group contributions like taxation with the
> same brush, though.
What about the _principle_ of it? Theft is okay, as long as there's a
consensus, even if they do it to you? At least Ms. Aimee Smith is
consistent about it, seeking to restrict speech that might harm the
majority.
> [...] I think it's very unlikely that every academic
> could find work in a corporation on those terms. Moreover, his work in
> quantum computation depends crucially on discoveries made in academia.
Here's are my three basic contentions:
* Academics like me and you are not _entitled_ to jobs.
* There is no way to tell for sure if corporations would fund basic
research in the absence of tax-funded government-funded programs.
However, corporations should have the right to refuse this funding,
though there are many reasons to think that it would be exceedingly
stupid to do so. I'm bullish on corporations realizing this, since it
affects their bottom line.
> That seems a tiny return, considering the wealth that is tied up in US
> corporations. [...]
Are you suggesting an "asset" tax, or an increase in the corporate
rate? That's a sure-fire way to ship jobs out of the country.
> I would be astonished if US corporations did not derive
> considerably more than $180 billion dollars benefit per year from public
> facilities maintained and/or developed with the support of the federal
> government.
_That_ I agree with. The farm subsidy is a particularly egregious
example of hard earned tax dollars propping up an inefficient industry.
> I happen to work in something closely related to Celera's interests. I
> believe can't sign their licence agreement to use their data as I would
> risk severely limiting my options if I decide to pursue a career in
> bioinformatics after I graduate. [...]
Okay, that's their prerogative. If you want a different agreement, go
somewhere else.
> [...] I'm not
> convinced by your bald assertion that a private organizations are
> intrinsically more efficient than public ones. [...]
Not *every* private organization is better than *every* public
organization. There is a fair amount of economic data to demonstrate
that my assertion to true _on average_. If you, like I can dig up some
studies for you.
Now, if you can think of a reason why the general caveats, such as the
lack of accountability and a drop in objectivity in the funding process
due to politics, do not apply to research, I'm all ears. There is
excellent research going at government labs and due to government
sponsorship, but I question whether or not it could be _even better_.
> For one thing, given the
> massive startup costs needed to finance the sequencing of the genome in
> a timely fashion, it's unclear that the genome would have sequenced by a
> non-profit organization at all. [...]
Celera sequencing the genome is not sufficient for you? By seeking a
non-profit genome sequencing, you are asking for something in exchange
for nothing. Is it right to _expect_ that?
> You don't stumble on something like the structure of DNA. Determining
> it involved a huge amount of work, with little promise of immediate
> financial reward. No company in its right mind would fund such a thing. [...]
And having 9 out of 10 drugs fail after research, development, and
testing, is not like this? If a non-profit was able to fund the work
of Watson and Crick, it's peanuts for a corporation of any size.
> So yes, government funding is important to scientific progress, because
> it makes such basic research possible. You can see exactly the same
> forces at work in the ATT example I mentioned above.
AT&T is for the most part an end-line service company; they do not
develop anything _new_, nor would they _directly_ benefit from such
activities. Lucent Technologies, by contrast, develops and markets new
technologies, and Bell Labs still is a vibrant research facility, if
not as glamorous as before. Feel free to visit the Bell Labs homepage
(www.bell-labs.com) to see for yourself. Also, check out the IBM
Research page, www.research.ibm.com.
Futhermore, the existence of places like SwRI (Southwest Research
Institute, www.swri.org) suggests that there is a demand for basic
research, even from smaller companies that cannot efficiently host them
in-house.
> If you haven't been forced to compromise between ethical principles
> directing you to behave in contradictory ways, you've led a charmed
> life, Sourav. [...]
Yes, I'm quite happy in that respect. It's also why certain people who
feel entitled to a penny of my money or second of my time get horribly
upset, and why they resent me for being so optimistic and free of angst.
> [...]
> Life is too complex to be amenable to a simple set of rules about how to
> behave, all you can do is choose a set of values for yourself, and try
> to favour those values in deciding how to behave. [...]
I suppose I have not faced the problem because I subscribe to only on
overarching value, my right to rational life. I do not have multiple
values to juggle and negotiate.
> from which I inferred that you may mean something different by ethics,
> that you're actually referring to some sort of optimization of your
> behaviour for the sake of social standing. Is that what you mean?
Well, I'm not quite sure what you mean! Ethics has to do with how you
deal with other people. If there is _no_ way to _deal_ with other
people without having to kill yourself, then ethics, the concept,
cannot even get off the ground. It's like talking about complex
numbers in a situation germane only to real numbers, to provide an
utterly patronizing example. ;->
> For starters, I think it would be tragic to scrap the elaborate social
> structures that make the US the economic and cultural powerhouse it is
> today just so that you can feel a little less oppressed by the IRS and
> the ATF. [...]
It would be tragic _not_ to. Freedom is government's to gain, and ours
to lose. We must start with the worst offenders, e.g. the ATF and the
DEA, and continue from there. There should be no reservations in
scrapping a little bit of predictability to obtain a great deal of
freedom.
> [...] I also think that there are forms of commercial exploitation
> that a laissez-faire government would be ill-equipped to deal with.
> [...]
What do you mean by "exploitation?" Surely not the term as abused by
the liberal left?
> [...]
> sethf's excellent article "Libertarianism makes you stupid"
> (http://www.spectacle.org/897/finkel.html) gives some good examples,
> [...]
Predictably, I disagree with every premise on which that article is
based, including the idea that ethics cannot be based on premises.
What are _your_ ethics based on, if not axioms?
> [...] but
> I don't really have time to argue about that aspect, and the ethics of
> laissez-faire economics are really secondary to the inefficiencies it's
> likely to induce, to my mind.
Well, I'm sorry that discussions about right and wrong bore you. As I
did with Cannady, I concede here and now that often the ethical thing
is not always the most economically efficient thing.
> > The US, as you probably know, had no income tax prior to the civil
> > war, and no stringently enforced income tax prior to WW I.
> [...] However, I'm not sure what your point in
> raising these facts is. [...]
The industrial revolution began prior to the existence of a huge tax
state in the US; the lack of public funding did not seem to impede
technological progress.
> [...] It would be facile to conclude that this influence
> sprung directly from effective taxation, but to my mind it does lend
> support to the idea that a society with a well-organized goverment
> capable of implementing significant projects is likely to be more
> effective than one with minimal government coordination.
Do you take significant projects to mean seeking strategically-forward
military dominance of half the planet? While the ethics for this are
complicated (though not conflicting!), I am skeptical about its
pragmatic benefits. Prosperity does not require military might
wantonly used, as seen in Northern Europe and East Asia, as much as an
absence of meddling. Strong _defense_, to prevent a looting of this
prosperity, _is_ required.
> Well, everyone'd do things differently if they were in charge. Such
> assertions aren't very valuable unless you can show in detail how the
> changes you recommend should work and what the advantages would be.
> [...]
I thought I did -- my revenue system is morally superior.
> Your proposal sounds inherently unstable to me, because people who don't
> share your objectivist values are going to accrete around the power you
> would afford the government, and bend that power to other ends than you
> have in mind.
How is this any worse than the current situation, where the non-ideal
men in power can take our property without our consent, and set how
much? Please demonstrate how there's more accountability in the
current system than in the one I propose.
Would you have supported the system in the Old South, where there was
slavery, because it provided stability? If not, I do not understand
how you can so cavalierly dismiss a consideration of ethics.
Sourav
------------------------------------------------------------
Sourav K. Mandal
Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com
http://www.ikaran.com/Sourav.Mandal/
