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  • 18
    Posted by Mamaemma 3 years, 5 months ago
    Iā€™m very simple. I maintain that the functions of government are clearly enumerated in the Constitution. Not included is publicly funded research.
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 3 years, 5 months ago
      Not to mention funding for all kinds of other government funded stuff.
      Planned Parenthood is the first other thing that springs into me Jurassic mind.
      Me da dino do believes it's a well-known fact that PP kicks some of OUR MONEY back as annual contributions to the now Marxist Democrat Party.
      No wonder certain well-known hypercritical Catholic Democrats supports those PP peeps.
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  • 11
    Posted by Flootus5 3 years, 5 months ago
    In my mind, the term "government science" is the most blatant oxymoron existing. By definition it is science by politics and once a matter becomes politicized, any rigorous validatable science is hopeless. That is a direct measure for how far a "government scientist" should be trusted.

    In this current era, the two obvious hopeless examples are climate change and pandemic. Followed quickly by "political science". Or is that where it starts? The Age of Cognitive Dissonance.
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  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 3 years, 5 months ago
    Ditto 'mamaemma' and I would add, who are we paying to do this research. I recall a lot of Chinese being paid to do research and they were spying on us.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 3 years, 5 months ago
    It used to be that all research was privately funded. That included Galileo onward. I think the only publicly funded research started with the military.

    Interesting fact: did you know that George Washington was offered a repeating rifle like a Gatling gun for use during the Revolutionary War? He didn't take it because the inventor wanted a small fortune - more than $30,000 - for each one. When Washington became President, his annual salary was only $25,000 - which was still enormous for the time.

    I think that its been shown that government-funded endeavors are in large part a waste of money. Why? Because there is little market accountability. There are no stockholders to appease and no sales targets to hit. There is no market feedback saying "customers don't like this product because of x" and no market feedback on how many units to produce or what price the market will bear.

    There's also the little problem that typically the best inventors don't work for the government - they work for private industry because private industry pays them according to their genius. Thus what you get from government-paid workers is decidedly poor. This was shown during the Cold War with Russia - without the theft of US designs, they would never have stayed even close to us in the arms race.
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  • Posted by trailsRus 3 years, 5 months ago
    Looks rather unanimous. I agree it is a misuse of taxpayers' dollars and, like so many other "programs", the political incentives always result in perverse outcomes. IMO markets always correct for bad behavior better and faster than government oversight does.
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  • Posted by Dreamer 3 years, 5 months ago
    Yes! Let's keep it simple: Protect our borders, deliver our mail, and keep our roads and highways in good working order....isn't that enough?? It's time to take back our world! What would it be like to have all of that that money in our pockets - free to choose how our children are educated, free to support researchers we believe in, free to be.
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    • Posted by lrshultis 3 years, 5 months ago
      "Would haves" mean a different past. Had the past unfolded differently, you and I and most other persons would not now exist. The ovum and sperm would, even if it were possible for the same to combine, would have a different random DNA pattern due to the difference in timing due to things being much different in timing. The wish that the past had been different is the wish to not have been born because a consciousness or mind or for the religious, a soul, is self made by the body that was born in its environment which is different for each body that is born. The content of a mind is not placed in a body fully formed but needs be created by the developing consciousness. Knowledge is not inborn but self created from observation, fear, or other means.
      Had there not been grant money stolen from tax payers, the knowledge base available for increasing the present standards of living would would not exist. Much knowledge seems to be of no use but it is not possible to know the future and what might come from knowing more about objective reality.
      This all does not mean that methods for obtaining more of that apparent useless knowledge can or should be changed. All depends upon what future one wishes to create.
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  • Posted by $ pixelate 3 years, 5 months ago
    Gov or Public funds should have no home in so-called research. It is not just a waste, those funds have a habit of being used to cut the legs right out from under me.
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  • Posted by $ jdg 3 years, 5 months ago
    I believe that research funded by an institution with an agenda (and every institution has an agenda) gets corrupted to feed that agenda.

    Thus I place much greater trust in research funded by oil companies or even tobacco companies than that tax-funded through government.

    (I mostly agree with Mamaemma as well, though there are ways to shoehorn research expenditures into federal spending that does not violate constitutional limits. For example, research at a university in DC, or funded by and for the Defense Department.)
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 3 years, 5 months ago
    Government handouts for academic scientific research should cease. Much of it goes down a rat hole, actually a mole hole. Many of those institutions financially pillage their students. they should go to the private sector for such funding.
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