Comment by maerF0x0
2 days ago
As a taxpayer I'm tired of funding everyone's project. Especially in private institutions which have billions under management and are ran like hedge funds, and not increasing their intake. Time to fix the deficit and kill off our debt.
If the rebuttal is "yeah but advancements improve the economy" -- The private sector can fund projects which are opportunities with an economic basis, they can take the risk and they can see if it is profitable in the market (ie beneficial)
If the rebuttal is "How will America stay competitive?" We cant seem to keep trade secrets anyways. [1]
[1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-64206950
Edit: Also the 4 years at a time thing is probably a better choice too, because it makes them less twitchy politically. You get your 4 years, regardless of who's team is in office. This should be a win regardless of your affiliation.
> The private sector can fund projects which are opportunities with an economic basis
You've inherited a nation built atop research which, at the time it was done, had no immediate pathway for economic viability. The groundbreaking research out of Bell Labs and DARPA provide many examples, among many more from other institutions, to support this claim which changed the entire world in addition to our nation for the better.
To think that this research would have been the product of economic incentivization is folly.
We, as a nation, have been spoiled by these gifts of our past and, like so many spoiled trust fund children, are flushing our inheritance down the toilet.
>no immediate pathway for economic viability
Investing in research towards creating digital computers and a global messaging system are pathways towards economic viability.
I suggest you look more into the research conducted at both Bell Labs and, separately, the research funded by DARPA.
What you listed is but a tiny fraction.
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It's a fine sentiment but there are a dozen different game theory principles that contribute these investments never getting made when left in the hands of the private sector. If you're upset about not reaping any of the benefits of your tax dollars, just buy the S&P 500. Of course you don't want the government investing in bad ideas but that doesn't seem to be your sticking point.
FWIW I don't think the status quo is ideal, the government should be getting more credit for and more value out of research that results in profit for private companies so it can invest in and lessen the tax burden of future research.
Can you please name/educate us on some of those game theories and how they apply? (Please don't just point me to prisoners dilemma on wikipedia unless it lays out how it applies to research funding)
Free rider problems/tragedy of the anticommons - research that isn't directly patent-able would result in a dearth of private investment because there isn't a comparative advantage in researching it
Tragedy of the Commons - Research into monitoring, maintaining, regulating, and improving resources shared by private companies
Positive externalities - Some research will not pencil out without including return on investment that cannot be captured by a company
Negative externalities - Companies won't invest in research to reduce injury to other parties (could fix with regulation also but depending on specifics this may be very difficult to enforce)
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How are we going to produce all of the basic research that is non-excludable & non-rival? What incentive do companies have to produce results like this?
The biotech industry is already tricky, with long lag times and a low probability of success. More risk just increases the discount rate and lowers the present value, making it an even less appealing investment.
Capital will seek the best opportunities, let's keep the incentive structure sane. Which means first tackling the biggest problems, with the highest probability of success, for the most people. As the opportunity space is explored or saturated, we'll move on to lower EROI opportunities. By getting the highest EROI initially we'l be richer still for chasing down philanthropic spaces (for the opportunities which do not make economic sense, but make moral, humanitarian sense)
Capital didn’t seek quantum mechanics which led to semi conductors which led to computers. Capital didn’t seek weather prediction which led to chaos theory which led to modern control systems for basically everything. And it certainly didn’t seek neural networks for the first half dozen decades they existed. So it seems like capital may have a poor nose for long term reach investment.
What capital seems to be doing right now is funding products that will create an AI replacement of my grandmother so I can continue to talk to her after she dies. Not exactly a good look.
"There will be so much money to go around for philanthropy" is also rich given that the world's richest man is going online to actively tell people not to give to the poor.
I ask again: How are we going to produce all of the basic research that is non-excludable & non-rival? What incentive do companies have to produce results like this?
Capital seeks the best opportunities, like deliberately lying about asbestos in baby powder, producing fraudulent research and continuing to profit off poisoning individuals.
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> The private sector can fund projects which are opportunities with an economic basis
The private sector can only fund easy low hanging fruit productization projects (Tesla, Apple, SpaceX, …) once the hard public fundamental research and infrastructure (Internet, Rocket Science, Physics, etc…) that has no short term economic value investment is done.
So only opportunities with a path to economic profitability should be researched?
That is a very narrow view of advancing society
Research anything and everything on your own dime. if it's taxpayer's money, then yes, it has to have at least a probability of profitability.
If it could be profitable, the private sector would fund it.
Government funding can help with things that we decide are good for society, but not quite profitable financially.
Examples: CDC lead exposure research, Earthquake Early Warning System… even the tech we use today came out of non-commercialized funding (NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography and ARPANET).
And if there is a probability of profitability then there is a market to sell that opportunity for capital.
But in a high interest rate environment some ideas just arent worth exploring.
generating private profits are the best use of public money?
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So many discoveries only find an application decades later. If you stop persuing knowledge purely for its own sake you will never again be able to compete with countries that are serious about science and you will never again live up to your past achievements.
From the perspective of somebody outside the US it really is a shocking tragedy what the Republicans have done to what used to be the greatest country in the world. I hope you can manage to right the ship soon because I fear it may already be too late.
I think there are a couple of misconceptions stated.
One, endowments, this is thoroughly covered by others in past threads about funding on this site and in any number of articles elsewhere. University endowments are directed to specific purposes and largely do not cover basic science, nor can they be redirected to do at will. This is not a discretionary research fund.
Two, the private sector funds projects on time horizons that are far too short for fundamental discoveries to reach a technology readiness level that supports commercial R&D efforts, and in many cases, is unwilling to fund the commercial development too. You're frequently looking at a decade plus for fundamental R&D, with massive upfront costs and no clear commercialization path. Even if you have something that is ready for commercial development, it's still an uphill battle to get across the valley of death with patient capital.
This logic is funny.
Because majority of the tax payers who might agree with the non-funding of "everyone's project" have another problem. They are also afraid of the unknown "They" and big industries - like Big Pharma. Private institutions research can be easily dismissed as biased. But given that like you they believe even public research is politically motivated - might as well not do any research at all.
Full charge towards third world country standards.
(PS: While I see you asking for proofs from others, you haven't provided any of your own. Do you have proof to show how this is going to fix the deficit and kill the debt?)
I dont think it's a leap too far to suggest that spending less on any line item is a step towards a balanced budget ie eliminating the deficit. And once a deficit is eliminated we can begin to work on the debt. What proof is required when it's very simple maths.
Here's a reference if you need one - "“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/90487-annual-income-twenty-...
There’s also good expense and bad expense. You just don’t say employees taking too much money, cut it and all good. You find what is needed and what needs to be cut. Where’s the proof that this doesn’t throw good research along with biased research?
You choosing to debate the last point and not address the issue I pointed about “let private enterprise fund research” tells me enough.
>As a taxpayer
So like everyone else in the world that pays taxes?
As a taxpayer you should go after wasteful military spending, not scientific research.
Or the ballooning wasteful paramilitary spending to wholesale trample our Constitution and attack US civil society. Destroying an apartment building on suspicion that it houses some illegal immigrants makes negative economic sense.
> As a taxpayer I'm tired of funding everyone's project.
Some Americans took a hard look at the state of America as the world's leader in science, technology, and industry, with a ton of cutting-edge research attracting the smartest from all over the world, and decided "This sucks, can we go back to the simpler times where everyone had a factory job and they all looked and spoke like me?"
...And they might just get their wish, from how it looks.
No, they absolutely will not.
Those factory jobs are, to a first approximation, gone for good. Either they are being done by humans in other countries that not only have a cost of living less than 1/5 of ours, but also have massive supply and logistics chains built up to support them, or they have been automated. Sure, there will be a few much-ballyhooed factories built and staffed, but compared to the period after WWII, which is what most of them are thinking of, it's going to be less than a drop in the bucket.
And, for the vast majority of people, that's an unalloyed good. Factory jobs are hard on the body. Office work may have less of a nationalist mythos built up around it, but it's genuinely better for most people.
Ehh... I was just making a crass joke that MAGA might end up making America so poor that Americans would be willing to work for terrible factory jobs. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The response (usually) is “OK but whatabout the $X billion we spent on the military?”
Which isn’t wrong necessarily, but it doesn’t answer why or whether we should be spending so much money on everything else
I actually agree here too. America (and Americans) spend waaaay too much, and especially on niche things that profit very specific subgroups. We need to get back to the basics. Johnny can't read[1], or do math. That should be funded long before we worry about today's PhDs, those kids are the pipeline of future PhDs.
/r
[1]-https://www.forbes.com/sites/ryancraig/2024/11/15/kids-cant-...
The state/local gov tend to be responsible for public education funding. in the US federal gov only does <10% of the funding.
US public education spending is also top 5 in the world so I don't think a lack of money is why "Johnny can't read or do math", something else is going on
> We cant seem to keep trade secrets anyways.
Zero sum thinking.
It is possible that we can improve the entire world and ourselves, but for many the reasoning is "It's not enough that I should win: others must also lose."
That is not zero sum thinking. It is a classic free rider problem.
The free rider problem is a natural consequence of all-encompassing progressions that benefit multiple parties at the least expense of themselves and each other.
Even the logic behind a pareto optimum necessitates the presence of the free rider problem, to prove the point.
The problem is the competitive landscape by which other nations which are Anti- us, are taking but not giving. And are happy to see us go down the drain to their own profit.
It's less about zero sum and more about the existence of enemies in the world who are even willing to lose smally if we lose bigly. (to speak like dilbert)
> who are even willing to lose smally if we lose bigly
Realistically though, this has nothing to do with geopolitics. This wouldn't be happening if the research community were driving around in trucks with MAGA flags and sleeping with Dear Leader body pillows.
This regime is entirely transactional and it's a howler to pretend otherwise. The academic research community could be dealing literal tons of hard drugs and they'd get a pass as long as they were card carrying party members.
fix the deficit and kill off the debt? he added $2tn by giving tax cuts to corporations...
I agree. Just because I agree with 1 thing "He" did doesnt mean I agree with everything.
So it's clear that cutting those grants was never about fixing the deficit/debt.
You don't understand how science works... you wouldn't have nuclear reactors or GPS etc if it wasn't for government run projects
I think you're asking a good question and it's not unreasonable at all.
The way I see it, the private sector is in a place to even potentially be able to fund research because of prior publicly funded research.
The capital expenditure needed to fund research in a way that leads to breakthroughs is massive. Private sector doesn't always have the cash needed. Definitely this was true for a long time, and is true for many countries still.
Then generally the private sector is pretty risk adverse, the majority of private sector funds are retirement and savings. People don't want to risk that, so it tends to invest in short term or more known ventures, which is rarely research.
Some private funding is research moonshots, but the pool of private money interested in that is a lot smaller.
That means, at least historically, private funding simply isn't incentivized to properly fund research, and may not always have the means to do so.
Now should the public still fund it? What kind of ROI does society gets?
Again, at least historically, the ROI has been massive. Let's just look at a short list:
- Internet - GPS - Semiconductor - MRI/CT scans - Vaccines - Jet engine, aviation - Lithium Ion batteries - Touchscreens - AI - Fracking - Mass agriculture - Space exploration
You could also question investment in art and humanities. Private sector simply isn't interested. Do we want to learn about our history, preserve our arts, these don't have financial ROI, but depending on your opinion on the matter they could be societal ROI because you might want to live in a society with a rich culture and record of its heritage and a good understanding of its evolutionary roots and what not.
To be honest, it's hard to find a single private sector breakthrough that wasn't off the back of the public sector either through direct funding, prior discovery or indirect subsidy.
I feel the issue is that after the public funding achieves breakthrough, the private sector quickly capitalizes on the profits. At the same time, the private sector is really good at commercializing and finding efficiency and market fit. The ROI happens indirectly, society modernizes through access to new things, the private sector creates jobs, taxes are paid on private transactions and income generated from the discovery, etc.
At the end of the day, it's all opportunity cost. What else do we do with the money. You said paying down the dept, what's the societal ROI of that? Why not lay down the dept with some of the other tax money? Etc. It's a complex question.
1) Tax dollars don't fund the government. The government funds the government. That's what "Fiat currency" means.
2) How do you feel about the money going to ICE?
Increasing money supply vs taxation is kinda just misdirection. It's politically disadvantageous to increase the tax % versus just siphoning purchasing power out of cash holders pockets silently and through the back door of increasing money supply.
Not sure why it matters what I feel about ICE, besides an attempt to categorize me or my affiliations. However, in general I believe the US has a large amount of very silly self inflicted wounds, a terrible immigration policy has lead to a situation where people only/primarily get in illegally, and then those people have to make compromising choices based on their legality. Attempting to reset the playing field is noble, but fixing the path to legality would have been nobler. A big chunk of it is a waste of money in an attempt to chase the holy grail in America... "Jobs".
> Tax dollars don't fund the government. The government funds the government. That's what "Fiat currency" means.
There was $4.9 trillion in revenue and $6.8 trillion in outlays in 2024 [1]. 95% of that revenue was from taxes. In spite of the high deficit, it remains a true statement that the federal government is funded by taxes as they account for the majority of funding.
[1]: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61185
The money would be spent regardless of what is collected through taxes. It's not as though taxpayer money goes into a gigantic bag in the treasury, and then those same dollars get pulled out to fund public spending until the bag is empty.