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How the U.S. became a science superpower

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Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#431

Post by Retric »

Robotbeat wrote: post #390
Retric wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That overstates the difference as mergers hardly destroy the old companies in their entirety. Instead it’s the same kind of shakeups you regularly see in government agencies. Picking one small example, HERSA is a merger of the Health Services Administration (1973–1982) and Health Resources Administration (1973–1982). However currently one of its major functions is managing the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program that showed…

There is a LOT more personnel churn in private sector than federal government.

That really depends on what you mean by churn. Lower levels of government are less stable than major corporations. Walmart stores don’t regularly all randomly shut down for a few weeks due to someone being unable to decide on a budget etc.

I’ll grant you it’s really different kinds of instability though.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#432

Post by Dumblydorr »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #350
blululu wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to WWII the United States was the world's leading power in terms of Science, Engineering and Industry - not Germany or the British Empire. The reason that Central European scientists fled to America (and not Britain) is because the United States had the scientific, engineering and industrial base to absorb them. Consider some of the major scientific breakthroughs to come out of the US leading up to and coming o…

Prior WW 2, the US had even no notion of quantum physics. How could it be the world power in science?

Michelson and his experiments on the aether not existing were enormously influential to theoretical physics. “No notion” is incorrect, they had numerous home grown talents in physics, on top of the huge influx of talent from 1930s immigration of European scientists.

The USA being a beacon of hope and enlightenment in those days stands in stark contrast to the isolationist, anti-intellectual, anti-research, and frankly xenophobic policies pursued by the current admin, courts, and congress.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#433

Post by mbesto »

WalterBright wrote: post #284
mbesto wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are far too many documented instances of it actually working to call it a fantasy. There are no documented instances of a truly free market. The parent's point I think has less to do with "it has been tried and it failed" and moreso that the idea that truly free market can exist is pure fantasy. FWIW - Costa Rica is probably the greatest example of a Libertarian's dream of a free market. I would love to show…

> There are no documented instances of a truly free market. There's no such thing as pure water, either. Nor is there any person who has not had impure thoughts. Nor can you ever cut a board to an exact length. Nor has anything created by man (or nature) been perfect. The historical reality is the more free a free market is, the better it performs. A free market does not have to be a "truly free market" in order to d…

> The historical reality is the more free a free market is, the better it performs.

Performs for whom? The central idea of a free market is that is provides better goods and services and thus better outcomes for civilization. We have countless examples of innovations that have come through government intervention (internet, space grade goods and services, GPS, etc. just to name a few), so you simply cannot say in a deterministic way that a free market "performs better". This is simply NOT true.

FWIW - I'm a free market advocate, but I recognize markets and areas where externalities cannot be controlled for and thus require a centralized body to regulate.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#434

Post by mbesto »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #283
mbesto wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are far too many documented instances of it actually working to call it a fantasy. There are no documented instances of a truly free market. The parent's point I think has less to do with "it has been tried and it failed" and moreso that the idea that truly free market can exist is pure fantasy. FWIW - Costa Rica is probably the greatest example of a Libertarian's dream of a free market. I would love to show…

> There are no documented instances of a truly free market. But why is that interesting? If you enter into a contract to sell your car to someone and then instead of paying you they steal your car and kill you, that's crime, not a free market. Killing people by dumping mercury into the river is still just crime. Killing people by burning dirty coal is something that should be crime, even if it officially isn't. But t…

> those places tend to do better than the places captured by central planners.

There is no deterministic evidence for this and you cannot unilaterally say that. The problem here is that the market/service requires context. The main point made was that you can take any market and it will eventually self correct - this is simply untrue and we have countless examples of this.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#435

Post by feoren »

anonfordays wrote: post #421
SecretDreams wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax wealth somehow, not just income. It's clear the accumulation has become a generational problem. Your great grandkids could cure cancer and bezo's could do nothing and yours would never have a fraction of the wealth his have.

>Tax wealth somehow I don't unserstand how you can tax something that varies in value by double digit percentages every week. If Elon got taxed when TSLA was $450 per share, and six months later it's now $250 per share... How much should he be taxed? Should he be provided a tax refund?

We have computers in our pockets that can perform trillions of calculations per second; we have social media sites capturing terabytes or petabytes of data per second; we have LLMs with trillions of parameters. So it boggles my mind to see someone say "we can't tax wealth, that'd be too complicated! We'd have to do dozens of calculations per year!"

You're imagining taxes as being one big annual chunk, but it doesn't have to be that way. It could be more like sales tax: baked directly into how these financial instruments work. You're also imagining taxes as computationally difficult, but they're absolute baby math compared to something like rendering a single 3D frame -- they're only artificially difficult for people because Intuit lobbies to keep it that way.

People get infinitely creative with financial instruments like collateralized debt obligations over mortgage-backed securities, but as soon as we suggest taxing wealth people throw up their hands and go "there's no possible way to do it!"

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#436

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Retric wrote: post #307
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no "other countries", it's a global economy. Mexico exports $450B worth of stuff to the US every year. When their fertility rate was 6 and then one or two of those kids immigrate to the US, that's fine for them. Now that their fertility rate is below the population replacement rate too, if their kids emigrate their country is screwed. Then there's nobody to make that $450B worth of stuff, because the kids wh…

Assuming current trends are unchanged we’re still talking about having billions of humans for hundreds of years. On that kind of timescale we might see significant life extension, artificial wombs, and hard core genetic engineering. Some countries like South Korea are going to face major challenges far sooner, but frankly having the most extreme examples collapse means the average stays higher.

> Assuming current trends are unchanged we’re still talking about having billions of humans for hundreds of years. On that kind of timescale we might see significant life extension, artificial wombs, and hard core genetic engineering.

The absolute number of humans isn't the issue. It's that people expect to retire at 65, but are now living into their 80s and 90s. Retirees have to be supported by working people, i.e. younger people. If the ratio of younger people to older people gets out of kilter, there's huge problems. Life extension makes this worse rather than better.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#437

Post by anonfordays »

SecretDreams wrote: post #424
anonfordays wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tax wealth somehow I don't unserstand how you can tax something that varies in value by double digit percentages every week. If Elon got taxed when TSLA was $450 per share, and six months later it's now $250 per share... How much should he be taxed? Should he be provided a tax refund?

He can't eat with his shares. He can use them as collateral for debt. Presently, that's how he dodges taxes. You'd close that loophole.

>He can't eat with his shares.

You can't eat with your brokerage account either, what is the point?

>He can use them as collateral for debt.

Yes, you can use your brokerage account, house, etc. as collateral for loans, this is not new or unique.

>Presently, that's how he dodges taxes.

What does this even mean? Loans are not taxable as you have to pay them back.

>You'd close that loophole.

That's not a tax... This is what happens when you get your financial understanding from reddit comments.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#439

Post by thatcat »

comte7092 wrote: post #423
jack_h wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2025, with the abandonment of U.S. government support for university research, the long run of U.S. dominance in science may be over. I find it amazing that this is the conclusion when earlier in the article it was stated that "[Britain] was teetering on bankruptcy. It couldn’t afford the broad and deep investments that the U.S. made." The US debt is starting to become an existential problem. Last year the secon…

The amount of money we are talking about for research is so small in comparison to the debt that it’s a red herring to even bring up the current debt level. As you’ve noted, even the largest parts of the budget are dwarfed by the total deficit. Researching is a rounding error. There’s this thing called taxes. We’ve had thirty years of tax hawks intentionally creating this situation that we find ourselves in, because…

Universities could pay for all of the research themselves theoretically considering they're the largest business in most states. Their portfolio income, the sports income, the donations, and the free real estate given to land grant universities that has been heavily monetized all add up. Of course I doubt they will allocate money to research, but they could if that was truely their purpose as an organization.

Re: How the U.S. became a science superpower

#440

Post by dhc02 »

anonfordays wrote: post #421
SecretDreams wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax wealth somehow, not just income. It's clear the accumulation has become a generational problem. Your great grandkids could cure cancer and bezo's could do nothing and yours would never have a fraction of the wealth his have.

>Tax wealth somehow I don't unserstand how you can tax something that varies in value by double digit percentages every week. If Elon got taxed when TSLA was $450 per share, and six months later it's now $250 per share... How much should he be taxed? Should he be provided a tax refund?

Tax wealth above $100 million at ~90% upon death.

In other words, make all the money you want, get as rich as you want, but it goes back to the commons when you die and can't use it any more.

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