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Originally Posted by Mondak
<i>Well, how about a few examples?</i>
I could counter with examples of governement waste, or with examples of countless corrupt governements that come to power...I won't. This is not a game where the person with the most examples wins.
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I offered some examples as you said you were unsure that that profit, as a motivating factor, has had negative outcomes. It patently has. To argue otherwise is to hide from the facts. That's not to say that profit taking and private investment, with an aim of financial return, has not had positive outcomes. It has had this result also. But to assume that profit is only a positive motivating factor is naive.
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Not sure if you were able to read some of my previous posts or not, but ultimatly when it is "government" research, the people who decide who the money goes to still act in their own self interest and not in the interest of the best research or best science. Gosh, I WISH that we had some trustworthy politicians to run things. Ideas like yours would be very nice and we could really get some things done. Unfortunitly, the fellows who hold the purse strings are a band of thieves.
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If you are referring to this thread, then yes I have had a chance to read your previous posts.
With regards to distrusting government fundamentallly, and assuming they never have the "common good" in mind, then you and I disagree. As I said earlier, this political theory is akin to anarchist thinking and itself has proven to be unworkable. Governments exist, and there's nothing much you can do about it. Though they may have slightly different ideologies around the world, they all share some basic characteristics. One of those is their right to spend money as they see fit and not to rely entirely upon the private sector, or capitalist economics, to achieve scientific progress.
It seems to me that your opposition is to the concept of a centralized, tax-payer funded government itself, and not directly related to the topic at hand; it being only one example of how "the government spends money".
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The only thing I can trust is if I tell someone with money that a potential new branch of science out there can help millions of people, that person will take their money and invest it in those that use their resources most efficently so that they maximize return. They worked in their own self interest, but also made something that millions can benefit from.
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And how would that result in the scientific advances that man has achieved to date? It is only in the past 50 years or so that massive corporations have entered the area of funding scientific research with a view to achieving private financial gain. Private citizens and state funded research labs have discovered much prior to that, and since that shift.
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If I didn't have to pay 70%+ of my income before doing so, it would be all the better.
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I doubt you pay 70% of your income in taxes. You may pay 70% of a proportion of it, but if the US has a scaled tax system (as I assume it does) I can only assume you pay no tax on some it and less than 70% of some it etc.
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The taxes I pay are in no way miniscule.
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I never said they were. I said that the amount of you taxes that goes to fund scientific research is miniscule. There's a very big difference.
Mr Mephisto