|
Mephisto,
The thing that pisses me off most is that if we are going to fund research with tax dollars taxpayers should:
a. receive commercial goods resulting from our funded research at a discounted rate
b. receive royalties into the tax coffers until the principle is repaid
c. recieve an excess of what we paid in some sort of reasonable amount, say 10-15%, just like a private lender would do.
Why should tax payers eat crap every time we fund these things. We take the risk by funding things that may never come to fruition, we bear the brunt when we pay for the products that are successful, and then we subsidize other places when they pay less than we do for the things we've developed.
Perhaps the excess I was proposing would go into an R&D coffer for future development. What a small and reasonable shift in funding policy and how much good and knowledge it would produce, in my opinion.
__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann
"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman
|