[ExI] Private and government R&D [was Health care in the USA]

[Mirco Romanato]

Stathis Papaioannou ha scritto:
> 2009/7/1 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>:
> 
>> ### So you think that government investment in pure basic science
>> (like astronomy or cosmology) is *not* purely a feel-good measure?
>> What makes you feel that free people would want to feel less good?
> 
> Well, almost everything the government spends money on is for
> "feel-good" purposes rather than profit, while for business the
> reverse is the case.

There is a difference from feel good and being good.
Until now, you supported that public spending and taxes are for good
purposes; now you support that it is all for "feel good" purposes.
But good and "feel good" are very different concepts.
The difference is "feel good" people are inherently egoistical, as they
act to feel good about themselves; that their action cause actual
damages is not important and it is better to hide, as it could reduce
the good feeling.

A doctor, like you IIRC, could greatly harm a person if he act on a
"feel good" basis and not on an ethical basis.
How many people would be killed by "feel good" doctors that don't want
them to suffer for no reasons? Or how many resources would be consumed
to save a patient with Futile medical care and subtracted to the
resources needed by other patients that could actually benefit from them?

The same is for publicly financed research and health care:
feel good trample being good.


> (Of course, this does not mean that some of the
> feel-good projects won't turn out to be cynical, corrupt or outright
> evil.)

Or that "evil" people would be unmasked by the abolition of public
health care or public research.
People, like you, that would never give freely to people in need or to
finance no-profit research.
And they would not give because they are interested in "feel good"
without actually pay the price of being good.

> People only agree to be taxed because the money will be spent
> differently to the way they themselves would spend it or private
> enterprise would spend it, otherwise what's the point?

That people agree to taxes mainly because they have not a better option
in mind and the costs of opposing to them is too big.

I never found anyone that claimed to had paid more taxes on purpose to
give more money to the government.

Mirco