Paywall news article complaining about privatization of information, enough said.
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Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
51–60 of 107 posts
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#52I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have so much bile and resentment towards individuals choosing freely and harming no one?
Whatever happened to America being the land of the free? When did it turn into the land of cutting down tall poppies?
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#53Responding strictly to the headline: What distinguishes American science, and why is this distinction important?
> What distinguishes American science, and why is this distinction important?
this isn't one of the article's complaints, but one distinguishing characteristics of american science funding -- indeed, of the u.s. govt's entire budget -- is disproportionate spending on the military. see the chart at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_St...
anyway, i agree with most of the other comments as i don't see anything seriously wrong with private investment in science. perhaps the fact that these are individuals rather than committees is what the author finds most loathsome, but my perspective is probably biased b/c the first thing that came to mind on reading the title was the allen institute for brain science, that's the first example in the article, and i think it's doing interesting and important research.
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#54I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have s…
Their success is on the backs of people who do the real work. They are also on the backs of the American people who contribute significant amount of money through government sponsorship. The tech we use today is based on government investment that the private industry coudn't stomach.
So no, I do not celebrate their success and I will judge them sharply for profiting so handsomely from public investment.
And don't give me crap about how we benefit too. If our economy was working as a free market that the same billionaires feel it should, they coudn't be billionaires.
Profit has no space in "real" free markets.
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#55I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have s…
Did you read the article, or just assume that it says what you hate?
The article is about the balance of funding -- how much of it is private, and how much of it is public. Nobody is claiming that rich people shouldn't be allowed to fund vanity science projects.
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#56Universities also privatize science through patents and IP. Research publications privatize research by bundling and charging exorbitant fees for journals and proceedings. Our generation doesn't have a NASA or Bell Labs. The closest thing to those outfits are vanity projects from billionaires... SpaceX, etc.
The only reason we have a shot at affordable commercial spaceflight, as well as an eventual affordable journey to Mars, is because of that vanity project. If it was left up to the public sector alone, I don't think we'll be able to go to Mars in 20 or 30 years. But this hasn't really changed. Even in NASA's hey day space missions weren't government-only projects - The space capsules and Saturn V were built by contrac…
Really? Public money got us to the moon in 10 years but couldn't get us to mars in 30? I think it is more about a lack of will than a lack of resources. Driving down costs isn't an issue. Imagine if we had the will to go to mars and spent the one trillion dollars we spent to go to Iraq on a mars project instead.
Driving down costs isn't the issue...
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#57I don't know why you would employ a science adviser who thinks that physics isn't "sexy." It's damn sexy. And anyone who really understands even a small amount of physics will think that physics is "sexy."
Think about what these uber-rich entrepreneurs would find sexy. Curing cancer, a condom people actually want to use, extending human life, saving the world from meteor impacts, bringing mammoths back, flying to space... It's all near-future, commercializable stuff. Next, go read some article titles/abstracts under quant-ph on arxiv and think about how many would of those would really grab these rich dudes by their ey…
'Why should we let people whose only qualification is money try to decide what's important?'. Let! Gosh, lovely implications. What constraints do you have in mind to fetter the lawful activities of very rich people? Who is the 'we' and how will you define 'important'? But it's the 'let' that worries me.
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#58I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have s…
The article was pretty nauseating. Openly worrying that the government isn't taking more control of human endeavour.
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#59I don't know why you would employ a science adviser who thinks that physics isn't "sexy." It's damn sexy. And anyone who really understands even a small amount of physics will think that physics is "sexy."
Think about what these uber-rich entrepreneurs would find sexy. Curing cancer, a condom people actually want to use, extending human life, saving the world from meteor impacts, bringing mammoths back, flying to space... It's all near-future, commercializable stuff. Next, go read some article titles/abstracts under quant-ph on arxiv and think about how many would of those would really grab these rich dudes by their ey…
If so, what say you to the Fundamental Physics Prize -- funded by Yuri Milner?
https://fundamentalphysicsprize.org/
Or the Nobel Prize before that, funded based on inventions in explosives (used for mining, construction, and armament), and to a lesser extent through Alfred's father's and brothers innovations in plywood, the torpedo, oil refining and international finance / business.
Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
#60I truly, truly hate articles like this. The constant tone of judgement and scepticism. The underlying assumption that the rich don't deserve to spend their money however they want. Why can't you just celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful? Why can't you just say thank you that so many wealthy people choose to turn their fortunes towards so many philanthropic causes? Why do you have to have s…
Their success is on the backs of people who do the real work. They are also on the backs of the American people who contribute significant amount of money through government sponsorship. The tech we use today is based on government investment that the private industry coudn't stomach. So no, I do not celebrate their success and I will judge them sharply for profiting so handsomely from public investment. And don't gi…
How much of the funding of Intel/Amd/ARM, who probably built the cpu you're using to access this side, came from the government? How much of the funding of this site itself, and of other sites you may use on a daily basis such as Google and Facebook, came from the government? How much of the funding for the GPU that's rendering this site came from the government? How are you not benefiting from all these things?
Long term profit has no space in models of a _perfectly competitive_ market, a theoretical concept used in the exploration of various economic ideas. The "free"ness of a market doesn't necessarily imply anything about the potential for profit within that market.