Posted on 07/20/2005 5:53:47 PM PDT by Sgt_Schultze
the jobs are going offshore, look at HP this past week (and that's just what we hear about). free trade tells us these jobs don't belong in the US, and government refuses to do anything about it. I don't blame the college bound kids from steering away from engineering - no one wants to pile up $80K in educational debt to get a job competing for wages with India and China. every young person I talk to now wants to be a lawyer, a teacher, a real estate agent, or a health care worker.
Ping.
I'm referring to the article. Did you read it? We usually comment on the articles that are posted. The article cites the Bush administration not allowing gov't funding of stem cell research as evidence that we are lagging behind in research.
Thanks, but this topic doesn't fit my ping list. I've been mumbling for a while now that someone needs to start up a stem cell/cloning ping list. Or a medical technology list. Something like that.
Is this thread for your ping list?
In the area of stem cell research, if there is potential, private enterprise should and will lead the way. It is often a tremendous waste of money to have the NIH or NSF give out countless millions of dollars to academic researchers who are only trying to get their latest research proposal funded.
I second the motion that the author is a moron.
Rant Alert!!!
You make a living in R&D and I salute you for that. That being said, I get a little perturbed when the private sector as currently managed in the US is held out as long term / R&D oriented. IMO, the management of many if not most of America's major corporations are by and large being rewarded for the wrong things.
Indiscriminately cutting R&D is one way to make a quarter ... and even your average CEO is bright enough to figure that one out.
Somehow we need to get back to capitalism where CEOs are paid to manage going concerns for the benefit of shareholder --- not to pump the stock for three to five years so that they can cash in their options and vest in their supplemental executive pensions. Stockholders are getting screwed and the boards of directors are made of of other beneficiaries of the same scam eliminating any effective checks
In terms of the sort of pure research that you are alluding to in the areas of stem cells, that is an area that colleges and universities can must be capable of handling to be considered as honest research institutions. Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not believe that truly massive sums of money are needed to carry on research where the active participants are PHD candidates [effectively free labor] and tenured professors who for good or ill] are effective ly "sunk costs."
Stop the tenure gravy train. Stop the ongoing CEO rape of the average shareholder.
END of Rant
[I just re-read what I wrote and sounds a bit anti-capitalist -- it isn't --- what it really is anti corporatist --- I'll just have to let it go at that]
Thanks for the thought, but no, especially not OpEds from the left containing no news.
Agreed, How about math, computer science and physics?
If you'd read my initial comments instead of reacting to them, you'd have understood my point from the start.
You've never heard of the free rider problem, I see. I suggest you take an intro class in economics.
Without basic research, there is no scientific progress, and without that, there is very little that commercially applicable R&D can accomplish.
The real issue of the United States losing our scientific edge is a problem, but nothing this guy says is in any way related to the real solutions. Instead, our loss of scientific edge comes down to a couple of policies and practices.
1. We need tort reform. No one wants to develop anything in the United States because the profits of any good effort are likely to be swallowed in lawsuits. People don't work for free, and those who toil for relatively little reward for years want to be able to reap a rich reward if their efforts bear fruit. If they believe that any reward they would have reaped will be taken by the lawyers, they'll invest their efforts elsewhere.
2. We need to stop socializing things. Another reason that people are afraid that they'll never profit from great advances is that the government tends to take the position that every great advance must be shared "fairly." I understand that it's hard to allow someone to die or live in pain because he can't afford some new advance, but when the government guarantees that everyone will have access to everything, it must put controls on the prices in order to afford that guarantee. Again, this practice makes people less likely to risk investing their lives in something that will never benefit them.
3. We need to reform much of our education system, and generally, that means getting the federal government out of the system. The education system isn't completely failing as some conservatives (and even some liberals) claim. We're still producing some very smart, very educated kids. However, we spend too much time teaching kids all the things that make liberals feel good even when those things aren't necessarily true. The government should be doing less to pay for education. For instance, Georgia guarantees a year or so of college to any Georgia student with a B average. The result has been that Georgia high school teachers who give less than a B are being sued, and rather than fight lawsuits, they just give everyone a B. Now, Georgia colleges are having to start all kinds of remedial classes to deal with incoming freshmen who are simply not ready to do college work.
4. When people say "The arts and humanities - ask for it," we need to slap them. There is always an effort by those whose arts and humanities degrees have no market value to water-down technical degrees by making engineering and science students take more humanities classes. This tactic is good for creating a job market for humanities PhDs who will never be hired outside a college, but it isn't good for helping the United States regain a technological edge. Engineers and scientists who are going to develop an interest in things outside their engineering and science will have time for other learning when they've graduated and started a job. I've read dozens of books on history and social topics since leaving school. Just because I wasn't forced to attend worthless classes in college doesn't mean that I'm not a well-rounded citizen.
5. Parents need to emphasize the need for their children to learn. When I was in high school 25 years ago, most of my fellow students didn't care about any of their studies. They piddled around through nearly every class. We could have covered 20% more material without even doing an hour of homework if those kids had just paid attention in class. Parents have to quit raising their kids to think that high school is a long, carefree party. Young people have to understand that they are preparing for life from the time that they are old enough to walk.
Bill
Why? This is a classic public goods problem. The output of basic research is basic scientific knowledge, which usually has no commercial value in and of itself. It is only when tht basic scientific used for specific applications does it have a commercial payoff. Furthermore, once the basic knowledge is discovered, anyone can attempt to apply it. Hence the person who funds the research usually cannot capture all of its commercial benefit. And hence, basic research gets underfunded if left to the market.
What's particularly dismaying to me is that many scientists themselves are among the most vocal in objecting to the "corporatization" of scientific research and the "commodification" of scientific knowledge, without realizing how important an open economy is to a healthy research environment. People who complain about the pharmaceutical companies controlling medical research are apparently innocent of the fact that the apothecary industry has for the past 200 years been at the forefront of funding for many of the greatest advances in medicine and chemistry. And if it wasn't for the beer industry's willigness to fund Joule's research, we would have been very late in coming up with the Law of the Conservation of Energy.
I would like to add that if colleges got rid of have their studies programs (like lesbo studies, crybaby studies, and god knows what else), colleges would be filled by those who actually want to learn..
In the column against the government funding of research, I'd list many inventions. I've never heard of Eli Whitney having government funding when he invented the cotton gin. I don't think Robert Fulton had government funding in his development of the steam engine. (I don't think he invented engine but just applied it to a boat. I don't remember that example very well.) I've never heard of Henry Ford having government funding to begin building automobiles or the Wright Brothers having government funding to develop a flying machine. Ben Franklin did a great deal of basic research without government funding. I think the same was true for Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell. Irving Langmuir wasn't working for the government when he developed the electron shell model of the atom. Samuel Colt invented and built firearms without the government paying for any of his basic research. American history is full of examples of privately-funded research making many of our greatest advances. Most of the more modern advances came from government funding, but part of the reason may be that the government is now controlling so much that companies have a harder time competing if they try to engage in basic research.
In the column in favor of government research, the Lewis and Clark Expedition was a success in many ways. We learned a great deal, and their travels helped build a claim to American ownership of the West. However, they did fail in finding the best route to the Pacific. The best routes over the Continental Divide were later discovered without government funding by the fur trappers. The atomic bomb and the early development of atomic energy was a successful government research project. For the most part, I think NASA has been a success. The atomic bomb obviously couldn't and shouldn't have been developed privately.
Again, I'm not against government funding of some kinds of basic research. On the other hand, I don't think that the lack of government funding would kill this research. If the government would just shrink itself towards the size and cost that it had back in the days of Fulton, Colt, and Edison. Today, much of the money that companies would have spent on the kind of great research that companies used to do is sent to the government in taxes, paid to employees who must sent so much of it to the government in taxes, or spent on diversity and other foolish programs that are needed to keep companies out of trouble with the government. If we'd eliminate these losses, we'd see companies doing great basic research again.
Bill
Basic research is attempting to understand the laws of nature. Applying the laws of nature to solve practical problems is not basic research. Discovering the Bernoulli's principle is basic research. Applying it to build an airplane is not. Mapping the human genome is basic research. Using that information to devlop drugs to cure genetic diseases is not.
Of course, not all basic research is government-funded, and lots of important discoveries were done privately. Like any public good, basic research will get some funding even without governmnet aid. It's just that it will get underfunded because the researcher cannot capture the full financial rewards from it.
I agree with you about stem cells, BTW.
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