[ExI] Strong libertarianism, societal good, & suffering (was: Cephalization, proles)

[Damien Sullivan]

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:58:02PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Damien Sullivan
> <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 01:26:09PM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> >> Ok, except that only ~0.001%(a made up number) of their taxes go to
> >> basic research while ~55% (another made up number) go to social
> >
> > Why use made-up numbers? ?A quick look around shows abotu 2% of federal
> > spending going to research. ?Welfare's harder to tease apart, but maybe
> > 5% by one analysis, though that might have included state/local spending
> > too.
> 
> I was including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security in my
> definition of what made up the 55%. It may be higher than that.

I don't think those -- maybe Medicaid -- fit the mooching you had after
the word 'social' up there.  I don't have a copy of what you said,
though.  Thus the distinction betwee welfare and the pension programs.

> If 2% of Federal spending is going to research, I would imagine that a
> LOT of that must be in the military budget.

IIRC much of it is NIH, actually.  Natl Inst of Health.  Lots more money
going there than to NSF.  Don't know about defense, though how much of
that would be 'basic' research?

NSF budget is $7 billion, 0.002 of the budget, or 0.2%.  NIH seems to
be $30 billion, or about 1%.  I'd remembered something on the order of
$70-80 billion for all research.

Oh, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122957411475117509.html says $99
billion, so 3%.  Don't know if all of that is basic research.

 though how much of that would be 'basic' research?

NSF budget is $7 billion, 0.002 of the budget, or 0.2%.  NIH seems to
be $30 billion, or about 1%.  I'd remembered something on the order of
$70-80 billion for all research.

Oh, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122957411475117509.html says $99
billion, so 3%.  Don't know if all of that is basic research.

On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 07:15:05PM +0200, Stefano Vaj wrote:
> On 31 May 2011 15:36, Damien Sullivan <phoenix at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> > Newly rich people being risk-propense does not mean that being
> > risk-propense is a good individual gamble for becoming risk.
> > Selection/survivor effects and all.
> 
> As the concept goes, risk propensity means that I am ready willing to
> take a one in ten chances of getting 100 rather than a safe bet to get
> 10. Both may be reasonable economic and Darwinian and game theory
> strategies - otherwise risk-propensity would not exist in the first
> place - but of course it implies by definition that 9 out of 10 risk
> takers end up with nothing, and that no risk-averse player ends up
> with anything more than ten.

Right.
Unless the risk-averse can pool their bets, of course.

> Really? Any hard data to support that? BTW, small businesses are
> essentially the business of middle class, which establish them, well,
> to remain middle class.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/big-business-america/
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/08/actually-america-isnt-a-small-business-country-at-all/23219/
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2009/08/an-international-comparison-of-small-business-employment.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629610001207

-xx- Damien X-)