Where is the pencil czar? | Hacker News Reader

Where is the pencil czar?

newsweek.com

16 pointsjlhamilton9 comments

Clever that they picked pencils instead of some tragedy of the commons problem like basic scientific research.

Huh. The classic tragedy of the commons example I was taught in high school was about lighthouses. In college, I found out that nobody had tested this empirically except Ronald Coase, who found that lighthouses tended to be private and profitable, historically (this, of course, is not taught in standard economics courses; I only found out because I took a course on Coase).

And I don't even know about scientific research. I've talked to people at private research groups (e.g. Microsoft Research), and at major universities; the latter spend a lot less time doing research, and a lot more time delegating to grad students or hustling for grants. It is ironic, I guess, that the public servants spend their time in such bourgeoisie pursuits, while the capitalists are busy doing research.

Just to clarify, Coase wrote (in "The Lighthouse in Economics" in the 1970's) specifically on the case of lighthouses in the British Isles.

Lighthouses in England are maintained by Trinity House (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_House) which is not in any recognizable way a private organization. While it operates with a large degree of autonomy, it is part of the UK government.

According to Coase, Trinity House funds its activities through "light dues" that are assessed on a per-tonnage basis to ships arriving at or departing from British ports. Assuming that there are never shortfalls or times when TH needs to draw on outside funds, then the scheme is self-supporting.

IOW, We're not looking at a bunch of hard-working libertarian lighthouse keepers each independently negotiating with ship captains in a free market.

Here's a roughly-scanned version of Coase's paper: http://ccer.pku.edu.cn/download/7874-2.pdf

Historically basic research in corporations has been done by monopolies (Bell Labs for instance)--therefore there is no tragedy of the commons problem: they are the commons. Microsoft research is just another example of this. (edit: I'm dying for someone to bring up pharmaceuticals as a great counterexample to this--if I could be so lucky)

What is "basic scientific research?" I think it is a relatively new idea that science be pursued for science itself. Most of it has very practical applications. When astronomers study the motion of heavenly bodies wasn't there a motive to keep time more accurately?

Pure research is only funded for its tangible benefits to society. That's why private research is more successful.

Next time you are browsing in a technical bookstore, I recommend Henry Petroski's tome on engineering w.r.t pencils: "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance". I couldn't get through the entire book but its exhaustively researched.

It's a classic piece of economics: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=304160

Very interesting, but the timing is a little awkward. The current disaster in the banking sector doesn't really speak to the brilliance of an unregulated free market, does it? (Or at least, there wasn't much regulation when the banks took greedy, foolish risks, but now that it's all gone south, guess what? Time for government intervention, by golly!)

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