[564] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: MIT & private research funding (happy, Wally? :-)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alex Coventry)
Sun May 6 21:17:08 2001
To: "Sourav K. Mandal" <Sourav.Mandal@ikaran.com>
Cc: mit-talk@MIT.EDU
From: Alex Coventry <alex_c@MIT.EDU>
Date: 06 May 2001 21:16:35 -0400
In-Reply-To: "Sourav K. Mandal"'s message of "Sun, 06 May 2001 18:16:51 -0400"
Message-ID: <etdy9saneks.fsf@cutter-john.mit.edu>
[Response to my claim that Sourav is tarring taxation with the same
brush as the draft in the Vietnam War.]
> What about the _principle_ of it? Theft is okay, as long as there's a
> consensus, even if they do it to you?
If we stipulate for a moment that government coordination of some
endeavours dramatically improves US society overall, then yes, I think
forcing malcontents into line is a lesser evil than letting the US turn
into a larger-than-life version of, say, the Ivory Coast.
> * 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.
Well, you're probably wrong. For instance, back in the 80's, the
Australian Government instituted a %150 tax rebate on corporate R & D.
In effect, they were offering to cover half the costs of a company's R &
D expenses, up to the company's overall tax liability. I was friends
with Dr Caughley, a senior member of the Commonwealth Scientific and
Industrial Research Organization who extended many offers of
collaborative research with Australian corporations which would have
reduced their R & D costs even further. He failed to cut a single deal.
Note that this was /specific/ encouragement to commit resources to
research, not just the silly-us,-you-know-better-than-us-how-to-
spend-your-tax-dollars-than-we-do,-so-have-them-back carte blanche that
you seem to be proposing. That basically no new research was begun as
result bodes ill for research as a whole without government assistance.
I counted two contentions there, by the way, not three. May I stick you
in the comfy chair? :)
> > 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.
Then it seems as if corporate America is benefitting more from the
efficiencies realized by the coordination the Government can effect than
they are losing by being forced to pay taxes, doesn't it?
[Response to me whining about Celera's licence agreement]
> Okay, that's their prerogative. If you want a different agreement, go
> somewhere else.
The point is that under the funding regime you're proposing, I wouldn't
have had anywhere else to go.
> 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.
Well, you're the one whose argument depended on the assertion that
private organizations are more efficient than public ones. I think the
onus is on you to demonstrate the problem with public organizations, not
the reverse. But at any rate, I think the NSF grant proposal scheme
imposes adequate accountability on research projects, and certainly
provides better coordination of the national research community than
could be achieved using only corporate funds. Moreover, I'm not aware
of any egregious inefficiencies in the HGP.
> 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?
Yes, if it results in dramatically faster comprehension of human biology
and development of treatments. In a sense, we /have/ wound up with
something for nothing after all of this -- I'm not privy to Celera's
plans, but given their use of the HGP's results in analyzing their own,
it seems likely that Celera redirected its efforts to sequencing other
genomes once it became clear that the HGP would be done on a timetable
acceptable to them (they're in the game to make money, not win a race,
after all) and the public availability of the sequence means that all
biology researchers everywhere stand a good chance of progressing much
faster. So everybody won, except curmudgeons who object to being forced
to contribute to such an effort. :)
This is the great thing about tightly coordinated cooperation -- the
efficiencies you achieve as result really do give you something for
nothing.
[Response to claim that it's unlikely that a corporation would have
duplicated Watson and Crick's work.]
> 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.
No, it's not. Drug companies have a fairly good idea about their
success rate with new drugs, and know that they can afford many failures
because the ones that pay off will pay off hugely and offset the
failures. Anyone who'd tried the same thing with the structure of DNA
would have been a fool. No one saw any money directly from
determination of the structure of DNA, and it's hard to see how anyone
could have. It's not like you can monopolize the idea the way you can a
drug. Also, I think you are underestimating the cost involved in
determining the structure. Most of the funding for that came from
Cambridge University, which was funded by the government. Moreover,
there was something of a race to determine the structure, and some
confusion about how to interpret the crystallographic results. Watson
and Crick were probably lucky to realize first, and it could have worked
out differently. So unless you're suggesting that dozens of
corporations might have been working independantly on the structure of
DNA and were prepared to share their results with each other, it's
unlikely that the research could have been pursued so efficiently or the
results promulgated to the world research community had it only been
funded by corporate sponsorship.
[On the viability of corporate funding for basic research.]
> 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.
I couldn't get through to the SwRI web page, it seems to be broken at
the moment. But anyway, I see very little basic research on the IBM and
Bell sites. I had a look at IBM's site, and saw very little of what I
would call basic research, except perhaps in the Algorithms and Theory
section. I found bell-labs.com to be poorly organized, but I couldn't
find any descriptions of basic research in progress there. At any rate,
even if these places devoted themselves entirely to basic research, they
would be insignificant compared to the research community supported by
the government.
[Explanation of why ethics seems so simple to Sourav.]
> 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.
OK, so suppose you have the opportunity to rob someone without him or
anyone else discovering that you're the perpetrator. Would you take
that opportunity? It doesn't seem to impinge on your right to "rational
life" to the extent that I understand what you mean.
[Response to claim that laissez-faire capitalism could lead to
exploitation]
> What do you mean by "exploitation?" Surely not the term as abused by
> the liberal left?
See the sethf article I pointed to for examples. For a more realistic
example, imagine what Microsoft could have done if it hadn't had the
threat of antitrust laws hanging over it.
> What are _your_ ethics based on, if not axioms?
For simplicity's sake, we could say I subscribe to utilitarian ethics,
for now. There's a lot I agree with in Peter Singer's The Expanding
Circle, for instance.
> Well, I'm sorry that discussions about right and wrong bore you.
You seem less interested in thinking about right and wrong than I do,
frankly. I just think it's unlikely that I can get through to you on
this issue, because you've decided that Objectivism effectively answers
all ethical issues, and seem threatened by criticism of it.
[Discussion of history of US taxation.]
> 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.
Yes, but the progress was nowhere near as rapid as it is today, and I
think public funding has contributed to this acceleration
significantly.
> 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.
a) I don't care about military dominance, I mean that everybody wanted
to buy stuff off you guys and you got rich. The military dominance was
just a side-effect of your wealth.
b) I thought you said all ethical questions fall out from your
overarching ethical principle, so what's complicated about this case?
How do you justify military dominance ethically?
[Responding to my objections to Sourav's proposal for law-enforcement.]
> 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.
Accountability is not the issue, here. The point is, governments
attract people with ambitious plans who want to use governments' powers
to further those plans. Some of those people's plans will involve
forcing other people to get involved. Since the aim of your proposal is
to prevent the government from forcing you to contribute to endeavours
without your consent, it would drastically disturb American life without
getting you what you want.
Alex.
