Comment by lexcorvus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lexcorvus | Hacker News Reader

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A predictable consequence of reducing government spending is that the population becomes dependent on, and concentrates power in the hands of, a few wealthy citizens.

It's worth noting in this context that the current system of government-funded science, which seems normal, in fact was invented more or less single-handedly by Vannevar Bush shortly after World War II. [1] The scenario that worries you was the norm for approximately the previous history of humanity. (This isn't to say governments never funded science, just that they didn't dominate it as the US Government does today.)

Will these patrons support academic freedom? An organization that challenges the social order? What if your research upsets someone; is your career/organization at risk? Will their ideas and whims serve the nation and world?

Every one of these questions applies with equal or greater force to government-funded science. Anyone worried that a private patron of science might, e.g., put his career at risk, should be a thousand times more afraid of the Feds.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vannevar_Bush

> the current system of government-funded science, which seems normal, in fact was invented more or less single-handedly by Vannevar Bush shortly after World War II. [1] The scenario that worries you was the norm for approximately the previous history of humanity.

The previous history of humanity isn't a standard that I think we should aspire to. It means no democracy, short lives, widespread brutality, open discrimination against most people, and not much investment in or success in the sciences.

> Anyone worried that a private patron of science might, e.g., put his career at risk, should be a thousand times more afraid of the Feds.

That's a strong claim. I don't agree subjectively; is there anything that backs it up? My impression from talking to people who apply for federal research grants is that it's tedious, time-consuming, but apolitical and based on merit.

The previous history of humanity isn't a standard that I think we should aspire to. It means no democracy, short lives, widespread brutality, open discrimination against most people, and not much investment in or success in the sciences.

It looks like you may be conflating several separate issues here. My point is that science seemed to work fine in, say, the period 1550–1950 without the NSF, NIH, etc., and it's not necessarily a disaster if we return to that model. We don't, at the same time, have to shorten lives, increase brutality, etc. (Democracy is a mixed bag at best, though; for example, in 1783 France was a troubled but basically functional absolute monarchy, and by 1793 it was a universal suffrage democracy that guillotined tens of thousands in the streets of Paris and bound books in leather made from human skin. [1])

[grant writing is] tedious, time-consuming, but apolitical and based on merit.

Getting federal research grants is apolitical only if your subject is apolitical, and the list of apolitical scientific subjects gets shorter every year. There are whole fields of inquiry—exploring heritable cognitive differences (if any) as a function of ancestry, for example—that are essentially verboten, while others (e.g., stem-cell research and climate science) are impossible to separate from politics. Moreover, even apolitical fields are notoriously subject to the whims of (democratically elected) Congress.

[1]: http://bit.ly/FrRevHL

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