[565] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Re: MIT & private research funding (happy, Wally? :-)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Craighead)
Sun May 6 21:38:49 2001
Message-ID: <3AF5FD87.5C255E95@mit.edu>
Date: Sun, 06 May 2001 21:42:31 -0400
From: Matt Craighead <craighea@MIT.EDU>
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To: Alex Coventry <alex_c@MIT.EDU>
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Alex Coventry wrote:
> 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.
A question of clarification: are we talking here about "basic"
research? How broadly are you treating R&D?
Companies do _lots_ of R&D. They just don't invest very heavily in
low-payoff research, which government pours huge amounts of money down.
Government has no incentive to engage in research with a good
risk/reward ratio; instead, it selects research based on political
reasons.
For obvious, well-known examples, think of the superconducting
supercollider (what ever happened with that, anyway?) and the
international space station. Specifically, you can look at the (very)
checkered history of the space station.
On the other hand, the company I work for invests in leading-edge R&D in
its field and turns its innovations into new products rapidly, producing
profits at the bottom line. When I look at the kind of R&D we do, and I
compare to the kind of R&D that universities are doing in the same
field, I can't help but be amazed at how _worthless_ so much of the
university research is! They're literally pouring sponsors' money down
the drain.
I strongly recommend the following article, written by the CEO of
Cypress Semiconductor, on why -- for continued innovation in high-tech
fields -- companies should be fleeing in terror from the heavy hand of
government:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/briefs/bp-37.html
Notably, one of President Bush's campaign promises was to make the
corporate R&D tax credit permanent. I haven't seen anything on this
since the election, but I consider this a (small) step in the right
direction on this issue. While I really would much rather see corporate
welfare and corporate taxation both eliminated, the R&D tax credit is a
small step in making companies independent of the government research
sugar daddy.
If companies were not investing in basic scientific research even
without corporate taxation, I would suggest then that we probably need
to beef up intellectual property protection, so that companies making
scientific discoveries can reap the rewards of their work. However,
proper contract enforcement should resolve this without the need for
tougher patent laws -- companies could license their discoveries under
NDA.
Ahhh, locking up science in the private sector under private property
rights. I can just imagine the universities and Naderites both
screaming, "knowledge should be for the PUBLIC GOOD!!!", while the "open
source" hippies start complaining about how "information wants to be
free". It'd be so wonderful to watch -- why, it might even qualify as
the start of an era of even bigger corporate rule. :)
--
Matt Craighead, MIT Class of 2002
President, MIT Objectivist Club
http://web.mit.edu/objectivism/www/
