Maybe we should crowd-fund science projects like we do Kickstarter projects. In the Internet Age, that's about as capitalistic as you can get.
Capitalist Science
21–30 of 82 posts
Re: Capitalist Science
#22We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.
Re: Capitalist Science
#23But this "capitalist science" has already existed for ages, hasn't it? Plenty of companies do science, monopolize the results through patents, and exploit them for private profit. That's capitalist science. > The economic structure of basic science is currently socialist, funded by the public at large through taxes for the benefit of the public at large. Yes, but increasingly less so. The public may fund it, but too…
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Property rights are a purely governmental construct. But without them, capitalism doesn't work.
Not sure why intellectual property is considered any different.
Re: Capitalist Science
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is it that basic research has gone away in industry? Don't we see really interesting stuff coming from Google, pharma, all kinds of materials stuff that we never even see going into textiles and building products... Why would you say that (a) Capitalism has caused basic research to go away, and (b) that it's bad at science in general? Added later: after a moment's thought, it seems to me that we have a great exam…
The problem is that most science that is funded by private companies is done only to further their funding companies' interests, not those of the general populace. For example, Big Pharma has no incentive to make a cheap cancer cure, it makes too much money off of current cancer treatment. Furthermore, the capitalist approach leads to biased results, again, because research has no incentive at that point to be honest…
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Re: Capitalist Science
#25I'd argue that our scientific process and development would improve exponentially as result of replacing the old Socialist, state funded model with a voluntary consumer model. Private enterprise is already financing ambitious projects once sought only by state provisions on their own merit. Such as Virgin Galactic. I think if innovation in these fields were brought into the responsibility of private investment, inves…
I don't recognise the world you are talking about. Particularly "the state monopolises on grandiose scientific projects, making it too difficult for the average enterprise to compete". On the contrary, the state funds the basic research that is then "monopolised" by enterprise once it has been sufficiently developed. The rocket tech. that Virgin Galactic is using didn't come from nowhere. Neither did the deep learning methods that Facebook is investing in.
Re: Capitalist Science
#26I'd argue that our scientific process and development would improve exponentially as result of replacing the old Socialist, state funded model with a voluntary consumer model. Private enterprise is already financing ambitious projects once sought only by state provisions on their own merit. Such as Virgin Galactic. I think if innovation in these fields were brought into the responsibility of private investment, inves…
Most of the big and basic scientific projects currently funded would never be funded by private investors.
Re: Capitalist Science
#27Is this supposed to be a scientific research paper?
> "The companies selling this product are required by the Capitalist Science Act of 2012 to identify the hypotheses in the database (or their negatives) that are necessary for the product to work as intended. By 2020, the database contains millions of hypotheses. Of the hypotheses in the database in 2020, many have a posterior (current belief) sufficiently close to the prior (set by the initial auction for that hypothesis) that the money made by the authors who provided evidence for the hypothesis is negligible"
What's up with the citation to the above paragraph:
> "[11] Both the prior (circa 2012) and posterior on Newton’s Law of Gravity (with appropriate caveats) will be very close to unity, for example, and the money made by the authors of database entries adjusting the belief in Newton’s Law of Gravity can be neglected in this example."
I can't parse this, Don't adjust your beliefs based on the fictional database? caveats to Newton's Law of Gravity? I don't understand.
This doesn't seem rational or scientific. It seems more like a narrative or personal exposition. Can anyone point out a hypothesis or any science here?
Re: Capitalist Science
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Property rights are a purely governmental construct. But without them, capitalism doesn't work. Not sure why intellectual property is considered any different.
Property rights are anathema to government construct. The state typically allows illusory property rights, but ultimately can and will defy these and treat them as a non-absolute concept.
For instance, you are your own property, but the state defies this by extorting taxation from you. They defy you, and therefore your property in order to gain value from your work.
Your work is also a result of your time, expertise and effort, therefore your property. So already tax defies your property rights in two different ways.
Re: Capitalist Science
#29I'd argue that our scientific process and development would improve exponentially as result of replacing the old Socialist, state funded model with a voluntary consumer model. Private enterprise is already financing ambitious projects once sought only by state provisions on their own merit. Such as Virgin Galactic. I think if innovation in these fields were brought into the responsibility of private investment, inves…
Most of the big and basic scientific projects currently funded would never be funded by private investors.
Only because the state monopolises such projects through taxation, regulation, licensing laws etc.
There are already examples of private investment achieving in these areas despite all of the above. I think private enterprise will eventually take over, but it will be a long battle.
Re: Capitalist Science
#30I'd argue that our scientific process and development would improve exponentially as result of replacing the old Socialist, state funded model with a voluntary consumer model. Private enterprise is already financing ambitious projects once sought only by state provisions on their own merit. Such as Virgin Galactic. I think if innovation in these fields were brought into the responsibility of private investment, inves…
I don't recognise the world you are talking about. Particularly "the state monopolises on grandiose scientific projects, making it too difficult for the average enterprise to compete". On the contrary, the state funds the basic research that is then "monopolised" by enterprise once it has been sufficiently developed. The rocket tech. that Virgin Galactic is using didn't come from nowhere. Neither did the deep learnin…
NASA is a government agency, in the UK we're bound to a part of the EU known as the European Space Agency, they aren't subject to the same laws and regulations, let alone taxes as well as all the normal rules of competitive business that privately owned enterprises are.
They've utilised their monopoly of force in order to contract themselves to these responsibilities. Most likely in order to use the glory to justify their existence.