Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

blogs.lse.ac.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 133 posts

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#111

Post by robotresearcher »

tsotha wrote: post #37
robotresearcher wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd feel less comfortable without NASA, NIH, and DARPA, since I have benefitted a great deal from the work they sponsored. I doubt very much I would have had those benefits so soon without these grossly inefficient agencies that have no idea what they are doing carelessly spending other people's money on creating the space age, the Internet age, and the age of genomics respectively. I don't believe for a second that…

Of the three, I think private investment would have done better than the first two. Even DARPA is notable for a handful of home runs that may have been just luck.

But since the first two actually did it, it's up to you to convince me of that.

For bonus points, try to do your job today without making use of federally-bootstrapped technology.

edit: also, Fede_V's sibling comment is spot-on.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#112

Post by robotresearcher »

dnautics wrote: post #45
robotresearcher wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd feel less comfortable without NASA, NIH, and DARPA, since I have benefitted a great deal from the work they sponsored. I doubt very much I would have had those benefits so soon without these grossly inefficient agencies that have no idea what they are doing carelessly spending other people's money on creating the space age, the Internet age, and the age of genomics respectively. I don't believe for a second that…

>I'd feel less comfortable without NASA, NIH, and DARPA, since I have benefitted a great deal from the work they sponsored. I doubt very much I would have had those benefits so soon without these grossly inefficient agencies... I don't believe for a second that private investment would have done these earlier. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”…

The Celera example is a good one, and you are right they did speed up genomics in a specific way. I'm certain they used many people trained-in-NIH-funded-labs and built directly on NIH-funded work, but it's still a good point.

The "idiotic and immoral business model" is seriously not cool though. Clinton banned patenting human genes directly, which might make pure capitalists cross.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#113

Post by cafebeen »

saraid216 wrote: post #107
adventured wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The research is publicly available. You can go read it right now and learn from it. You're confusing the difference between the research they did being publicly available, and Stanford holding a patent on PageRank . http://ilpubs.stanford.edu:8090/422/1/1999-66.pdf

The entire point of a patent is to make it publicly available while funneling money to the patent holder (who is presumably the inventor). That's the entire point . That's why the patent system exists . To say something is patented is the same as saying it's publicly available.

The point of a patent is to exclude others from using intellectual property, not to make it "publicly available":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#Effects

To quote the supreme court:

"A patent is not the grant of a right to make or use or sell. It does not, directly or indirectly, imply any such right. It grants only the right to exclude others."

The point is to provide some temporary protection for inventors in exchange for public usage once the patent has expired.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#114

Post by zo1 »

bobwaycott wrote: post #48
anaolykarpov wrote: post #25

I so very much hate socialism. The state, with the money it took from all of us through taxes is presented as a benefactor because it gives small amounts of those money back to research. And she wants the state to have more share from successful research. The state, any state, is a very bad administrator of funds, because the so called state are basically a bunch of people spending other peoples money on things that…

This reads as little more than pure emotion coupled with sweeping universalizing--the state is universally evil, private capital is universally good. Absolutely nothing about states or capital investors can be so easily reduced to such a binary conclusion. Private capital, and the humans who administer it, has repeatedly mismanaged funds, and been responsible for enormous fuck-ups that have far-reaching and devastati…

>"The state does not take money. We no longer live under feudalism, friend. We no longer labor under the unquestionable divine right of kings. The modern democratic state is, by the free association and choice of its underlying organizational units, and the continued consent of its citizens, asked to assume the role and responsibilities, at least in the US, of the following:"

And what if we do not consent? I certainly don't, and yet I have no where to go. You call it freedom of association, I call it compliance under the threat of imprisonment.

Make no mistake about it, you can use fancy words and ideas to make it noble. However, if you choose to gloss over those that do no consent to your wonderful little 'union' of 'domestic tranquility' then you are not at all better than the feudal kings/lords that you use as a counter-example to democracy.

You know what was the big thing about the Feudal system? Absolute ownership of all land by kings/lords, where the peasants had to rent it by virtue of being born on the land. Oh so very analogous to what we have now where people have very little choice but to live in the state that they are born with. There is simply no alternative, no place where free people can go to pursue actual free-association through peaceful means. You just have to replace 'lords/kings' with 'state/government' and you quickly see the picture.

But of course, I am "free". I am free to move to Somalia, apparently. Either that, or more to another King/Lords piece of land.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#115

Post by dmfdmf »

nl wrote: post #30
dmfdmf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The title of this piece is terrible... I agree but not for the same reasons I am sure. This title is an old saw from the socialists and has been around for decades. The implicit conclusion is that to make things "fair" we should socialize risk AND reward. How convenient for the socialists. No. The discussion we should be having is; What is the proper function of government? What is your standard? > Her argument app…

I think you might have a useful point in there somewhere, but using overly emotive terms ('the socialists', fascism, communism and freedom) isn't useful. Its worth pointing out that 'the end of the road' is an implication that the extreme end of a political system is a goal. It's not, and it is rare anyone would argue that a hybrid economic system isn't the most sensible.

Since when did the concept of "freedom" become too emotional for rational discourse? Moreover, the fascists and communists are responsible for the murder of millions whenever they got into power so the negative emotive meaning of those terms are well-earned and not some rhetorical trick on my part.

NB: Socialism is the wider term and means that the individual serves or lives by permission of the society. Communism and fascism are two types of socialist systems, different in form but not function. In a communist society the government owns ALL the property as a matter of law. A fascist society allows private ownership of property but the government has unlimited power to use, direct, control or confiscate private property for the "good" of the society, i.e. private ownership is in name only. Guess which system the USA is moving toward?

> Its worth pointing out that 'the end of the road' is an implication that the extreme end of a political system is a goal.

It is an implication many people refuse to identify, that doesn't make it any less real. Your position is the same as that of a bank robber who refuses to identify that the end of his road is death or jail and then laughs at you when you point it out, that that is not his goal; his is to get rich.

> It's not, and it is rare anyone would argue that a hybrid economic system isn't the most sensible.

Am I suppose to be intimidated by the majority opinion? I am not. A "hybrid" system or the so-called "third way" in politics (a split between socialism and capitalism) are a complete sell out to the socialists and is not sensible but stupid if you value freedom. There are somethings that can't be split down the middle, its either/or, like Solomon and the baby. Some things are all or nothing, like honesty. Can you claim to be an honest man if you only steal on Tuesdays (or only steal from the "rich")? No. Social systems either recognize and protect individual rights or they abrogate them and consume and use individuals for their own ends. You can't have it both ways. Finally, you need to realize that by advocating for a "hybrid" social system, by the logic of it, what you will get is fascism.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#116

Post by dmfdmf »

ralmidani wrote: post #90
dmfdmf wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The title of this piece is terrible... I agree but not for the same reasons I am sure. This title is an old saw from the socialists and has been around for decades. The implicit conclusion is that to make things "fair" we should socialize risk AND reward. How convenient for the socialists. No. The discussion we should be having is; What is the proper function of government? What is your standard? > Her argument app…

> The implicit conclusion is that to make things "fair" we should socialize risk AND reward. How convenient for the socialists. Straw man. Fairness means: public funding -> public benefits private funding -> private benefits

You don't know what a straw man argument means. Also, you drew the exact point the socialists wanted you to draw and thus proved my point. Who can argue with your little sketch of fairness? If the "public" does the funding shouldn't the "public" get the benefits? Of course, its a simple inference like a Sudoku puzzle with one number missing.

As I indicated, you need to widen your view. Where does public funding come from? Is it valid for the government to confiscate money from some people to give to other people (poor people, investors, kings; the recipient does not matter)? This is the fairness that I was referring to and the wider question; is government funding of investment a valid function of government? What is your standard?

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#117

Post by pc86 »

rtpg wrote: post #13
Quanticles wrote: post #12

"Economists think this will happen via tax (from the jobs created, and from the profits of the companies), yet so many of the companies that receive such benefits from state funding, bring their jobs elsewhere, and of course we know they also pay very little tax." He makes it sound like the USA would be just as well off if big tech companies weren't here. The US government is basically a ~15% shareholder in all US co…

remember that time GE paid basically 0% in taxes? the 30% number is only in theory (there is the salary breakdown but I don't think 30% is the number that ends up hitting)

The 30% number is also marginal, which is often forgotten by those arguing that corporations (or certain people) aren't paying enough taxes.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#118

Post by dnautics »

nmrm2 wrote: post #84
dnautics wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd feel less comfortable without NASA, NIH, and DARPA, since I have benefitted a great deal from the work they sponsored. I doubt very much I would have had those benefits so soon without these grossly inefficient agencies... I don't believe for a second that private investment would have done these earlier. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”…

> “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair The author met that they've benefited in the sense that we all have benefited. I very much doubt that there are many people in the world who have directly benefited (i.e., received grants from) all of NASA, the NIH, and DARPA.

Even if the benefit is indirect, it's still hard to see how alternatives are possible, even when the evidence is right there in front of you. Did you even know we eradicated two diseases without the NIH (Smallpox, eliminated in the US by 1897, long before the NIH existed) - and Polio, eliminated through the private nonprofit March of Dimes.

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#119

Post by tsotha »

Fede_V wrote: post #92
tsotha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the three, I think private investment would have done better than the first two. Even DARPA is notable for a handful of home runs that may have been just luck.

You realize that is exactly the model of VC? :) You bet on a lot of very long shots, but the few mega successes pay off sufficiently to make it all worth it.

Right. Are VC's normally using public money?

Re: We have socialised the risk of innovation but privatised the rewards

#120

Post by tsotha »

robotresearcher wrote: post #111
tsotha wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the three, I think private investment would have done better than the first two. Even DARPA is notable for a handful of home runs that may have been just luck.

But since the first two actually did it, it's up to you to convince me of that. For bonus points, try to do your job today without making use of federally-bootstrapped technology. edit: also, Fede_V's sibling comment is spot-on.

>But since the first two actually did it...

Did what?

Post reply on HN