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Comment by jameslk | Hacker News Reader

Organizations should avoid funding by the government whenever possible. It creates incentives for the organization to align with the politics of the government. I am all for this outcome, as it’s a net win for PSF and any organization that can fund itself

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But if they don't get it from the government, they'll get it somewhere else, and then that will create incentives for the organization to align with the politics of whoever gives them the money. There's no escaping the implicit dependence that comes with accepting money.

I think we just need to reduce the amount of discretion involved in government action of all kinds.

> But if they don't get it from the government, they'll get it somewhere else

It's not an equal comparison. The biggest governments in the world don't need anymore consolidated power.

> I think we just need to reduce the amount of discretion involved in government action of all kinds.

This we both agree on.

> There's no escaping the implicit dependence that comes with accepting money.

And, at least, the government was elected and has votes to back its political power.

Other sources usually use money to back their political power, which is another problem altogether - political power should NEVER come solely from money.

Regardless of how you feel about the nature of government funding, you should be able to cogitate a strong argument for the U.S. government not playing “gotcha” games with its funding.

Yes, outcomes like these are the best way to avoid dependency on a central authority. I’m more for moving away from the ability of such authorities to exercise such power, rather than hoping they don’t abuse it. They certainly will eventually

The problem is that the population of the US is itself polarized, and different factions want the government to be doing extremely different things with its funds. If faction A has successfully gotten the US federal government to fund something for a long time, and faction B hates that thing, campaigns on ending the funding, and then does end it once they win an election and take power - then a demand for the US to not play gotcha games with its funding is isomorphic to a demand from political faction A to keep some of their preferred policies in place even though they are not currently in a position of electoral power.

This is exactly what set OpenBSD back in the early 2000s.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/defense-agency-pulls-openbsd-f...

Maybe that $500k that was earmarked for OpenSSL vulnerability testing would have found Heartbleed.

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