[extropy-chat] Three-quarters of N. American's support stemcellresearch

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Jun 19, 2004, at 9:03 PM, Brett Paatsch wrote:
> Good thread. Important topic. But I think the surface is still only
> getting scratched here.  I'd like to see both  J. Andrew Rogers
> and Reason develop their respective cases if they can.


My point was essentially that this hand-wringing is a classic 
historical myopia.  When granting the government abilities, powers, and 
resources, you should never ask what your friends and comrades would do 
with such things but what your enemies would.  Because eventually, your 
enemies will be in a position to utilize such things as *they* see fit. 
  Bad people frequently misuse powers granted by the foolish people to 
long gone benevolent people.

Is it a pity that Federal funds aren't being spent on stem cell 
research?  Yes, but you should have known this could happen when you 
foolishly allocated the funds of private citizens to the research whims 
of the government.  Everyone made a deal with the devil and they 
eventually got burnt.  Color me shocked.

The wide-eyed naivete of all these babes in the government research 
woods is just a tad irritating when you consider that this has been 
going on for decades.

To put it another way, if everyone thinks the people can be better 
trusted to decide what should and shouldn't be researched, then why the 
hell did they vote to take money away from the folks who fund private 
research and give it to the government for them to decide on such 
things?  People need to take responsibility for their decisions and 
have some kind of coherent sense of the consequences of those 
decisions.  The way to fix this isn't to demand that the government 
fund stem cell research, but to get the government out of research of 
this type altogether.  Otherwise, you are just deferring the same 
problem to another day, perhaps on an issue far more important than 
stem cells.



Fortunately for all of us, private research is typically funded for 
some combination of greed, philanthropy, and good old curiosity.  
Importantly, it is NOT funded to pander to a constituency or to keep 
their buddies paid because the only constituency to answer to are the 
guys who provided the money in the first place and the only reason they 
are doing it is to see results.

There isn't much in the way of oppressive regulation of most research, 
nor is there likely to be much of that despite the doomsday scenarios 
to the contrary.  Withdrawing the Federal government from an area of 
research is largely an empty gesture to make a constituency happy, and 
does not substantively stop research.  The fact that vast quantities of 
private money have been offered up to fill any nominal gaps caused by 
the withdrawal of Federal funds lends credence to this.  If there was 
so much private money willing to pick up the slack, why was the 
government funding it in the first place?

The withdrawal of Federal funding was a perfect political calculus.  
They throw a bone to an interest group, but don't actively prevent the 
majority from doing as they wish.  The politicians get a win, and the 
general population doesn't actually lose much in the bargain, so it is 
soon forgotten.

All the political rhetoric in the world cannot stop a cold pragmatic 
economic calculus.  If most people want something, they'll get it.  And 
the politicians will make damn sure they can get in on a taste of that 
action.  What they don't do is outright ban something that is popular 
with the public because there is no gain to be realized from it -- you 
generally don't get to be a politician without being a venal weasel.  
That same greedy self-interest is why even if politicians in one 
country actually ban something outright, you can always find another 
country where the politicians will see that as an opportunity to 
increase their own prestige and power.

No, the only mistake here was thinking that it was a good idea to let 
politicians decide what kind of research gets funded in the first 
place.  That was just idiotic.  For similar reasons, having any kind of 
global organization, like the UN, regulate this kind of thing is 
profoundly stupid as it eliminates the escape hatch of a competitive 
market in case the politicians in one sovereign entity all get together 
and decide to be imbeciles, which happens more often than it should.

j. andrew rogers