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

Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 107 posts

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#91

Post by csense »

The more philanthropy or private investment we can attract to scientific innovation, the better.

The public gets the benefit of inventions that wouldn't have existed without this investment (assuming they're marketed in the short term, and in the long term the patents eventually fall into the public domain).

Or alternatively, if billionaires start doing more research, this could be offset by cutting, or slowing the growth of, taxpayer-funded research spending. And give the money back to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts, deferred tax hikes, or different services.

Also, there's less of the waste and uncertainty associated with government spending (think about how many articles you see on long-running science experiments disrupted by Washington's latest budget spasm; if Gates has dumped $100 million into AIDS research and needs $100 million more to produce a vaccine, he's probably going to follow through).

And if things go awry the fallout's not as bad (if Solyndra had happened to some billionaire spending his own money, I don't think anyone would have been outraged).

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#92

Post by nirnira »

logicchains wrote: post #89
mempko wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, are you familiar with the history of google and facebook? Pagerank was paid for by a government grant. Why aren't the profits of google being distributed into our pockets? Facebook had early investment from CIA connected sources. SpaceX is almost all funded by NASA. I mean look at the technologies they built. Largest people tracker (Google) and largest communication graph (Facebook). Look at the current web t…

No, I'm not familiar with the history of Google and Facebook, hence why I was asking for data regarding what proportion of their business was funded by government money. As in, a percentage.

Hint: the answer for both companies lies somewhere between 0 and 0%.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#93

Post by tsotha »

logicchains wrote: post #90
tsotha wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More difficult than malaria or AIDS? I doubt it. Diabetes will probably be a much easier nut to crack than either, with or without lifestyle changes.

Well according to some graphs I found on Google, malaria mortality rates have reduced significantly in the past few decades [1], as have AIDS death rates [2]. Diabetes rates and mortality have however been continuously increasing. 1. http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1995/land05.jpg 2. http://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/images/colorbox...

So diabetes should be the easiest one to attack.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#94

Post by logicchains »

tsotha wrote: post #93
logicchains wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well according to some graphs I found on Google, malaria mortality rates have reduced significantly in the past few decades [1], as have AIDS death rates [2]. Diabetes rates and mortality have however been continuously increasing. 1. http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1995/land05.jpg 2. http://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/images/colorbox...

So diabetes should be the easiest one to attack.

How might it be attacked, from a medicinal perspective?

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#95

Post by dm2 »

tsotha wrote: post #78
firstOrder wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Well let us look at these rich people, on the Forbes 400 richest list. So people can celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful. #1 Bill Gates - had a million dollar trust fund from his bank president grandfather, mot…

>#1 Bill Gates - had a million dollar trust fund from his bank president grandfather, mother on United Way board with president of IBM In what reality could the act of taking a million dollars and multiplying it by a factor of seventy six thousand be viewed as being "born into it"?

He worked very hard, it just came natural to him. If he was lower-class he would have never had access to early computers and it would be much less likely that he would have been successful at all.

He was a natural leader, but you can't just start out as a CEO unless you have a product or service to offer. Bill Gates couldn't have had time to build his software if he had to work daily to put himself through school (to have access to the computer).

Starting with a million dollars is no different than starting with 100 million, it all depends on how good the person is at spotting opportunity, learning from mistakes, and manipulating (not in a bad way) people to help you build your empire.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#96

Post by imron »

psychometry wrote: post #50
imron wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a paywalled article. Turn cookies on and click the link again. If you have cookies off when you click the link it redirects to the login page.

You can't read it if you've already read 20 articles in the past month, either, thanks to evercookie.

Never had a problem. I use a plugin for auto deleting regular cookies and evercookie requires javascript, which I have disabled by default.

That being said, I probably wouldn't read more than 20 articles a month on the NYTimes either - just the occasional one posted to HN that catches my interest.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#97

Post by Tycho »

mempko wrote: post #81
hueving wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Profit has no space in "real" free markets. What kind of drivel is that? If you create a product/service which nobody else can duplicate and the demand for it is there, you are going to make a profit. That's exactly how a "real" free market functions.

why wouldn't someone be able to duplicate? You keep things secret? Government protects you via patents and copyright? I mean econ 101 is that markets bring profits towards zero. A perfect market with perfect information means zero profit. Any market that tends towards "perfection" would therefore be anathema to any capitalist. In other words, fuck man, capitalists hate markets. They would prefer that you don't have a…

Profits would only go to zero if everybody was equally talented, equally educated, equally industrious, and equally lucky. Reality, of course, is quite different.

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#98

Post by mempko »

Tycho wrote: post #97
mempko wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why wouldn't someone be able to duplicate? You keep things secret? Government protects you via patents and copyright? I mean econ 101 is that markets bring profits towards zero. A perfect market with perfect information means zero profit. Any market that tends towards "perfection" would therefore be anathema to any capitalist. In other words, fuck man, capitalists hate markets. They would prefer that you don't have a…

Profits would only go to zero if everybody was equally talented, equally educated, equally industrious, and equally lucky. Reality, of course, is quite different.

So you are saying that of you win the genetic lottery, you make profits?

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#99

Post by mempko »

nirnira wrote: post #87
mempko wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am too nice to do what those people do. I am too nice to fire anyone, to stab my partner in the back. To steal millions from my employees. To lie to investors. I am just too honest damned. and just too damn nice to attempt to do what these people do. Remember the Simpsons episode with Bill Gates where he says "I didn't get rich by writing checks!" And why the hell are you defending those people? Do you wish to be o…

Jesus, get a grip. Stop embarrassing yourself.

Lol, don't worry, I only exist on the internet. Your bosses on the other hand...

Re: Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

#100

Post by wallflower »

"Because of science - not religion or politics - even people like you and me can have possessions that only a hundred years ago kings would have gone to war to own. Scientific method should not be take lightly.

The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II...

Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world. Governments went into the science business big time.

Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research...

James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public scientific issue. Very little experimental verification has been done to support important societal issues in the closing years of this century...

People believe these things...because they have faith."

-From Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner (and the genius inventor of PCR) in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field".

Post reply on HN