[ExI] Judging radical possibilities

[Adrian Tymes]

2011/9/25 Dennis May <dennislmay at yahoo.com>:
> Adrian Tymes wrote:
>> Public funding is not literally taken at the point of a gun, ..."
>
> Refuse to pay and you will see the guns which were always
> present.

If one or a few do.  My point is that this is only possible because
most do not.  If most refused to, there would not be enough guns.
The government is well aware of this.

It is therefore factually incorrect to speak of guns as the only, or
even the primary, or in practice even a significant, means of
taking the money.  Yes, it's there in a few cases.  The rest of the
cases lend it an entirely different character than if it was usually
taken at the point of a gun.

> Adrian Tymes wrote:
>> almost all long-term science investment (and the majority of
>> investments that can rightfully be called 'science' have a
>> long-term focus; ...only comes from institutions, such as
>> governments, that care about long-term" is, I believe, a
>> factually accurate statement."
>
> Most all major advancements in science have come from
> individuals or very small groups of people.  Many of these
> scientists did work at universities.  Hisotorically many
> universities have been privately founded and funded.

And many have been publicly funded - even the ones that were
privately founded.  Unless you can show that dramatically
more private money than public has gone into them - including
government-sponsored research contracts, on the public side -
your argument here is invalid.

Even if it weren't, I said "institutions, such as governments".
Universities are certainly institutions, and they care more about
long-term stuff than most private money.

> You
> seem to be confusing individual wealth with certain types
> of corporate entities.

Because corporate entities collectively control more private
money than do individuals (not counting individual investments
in corporate entities, since you make the distinction).

> Wealthy
> individuals can do whatever they want with their money

And, by and large, have not been investing it in science.  Or
things that benefit other people.  That's the main reason for
the current economic situation: money has gotten
concentrated in the hands of a few, and is staying there.

> I mean economically freer times - the growth days of Scotland
> and the US in the 1800's - 6% to 8% real growth year after
> year, decade after decade.

"Growth" is not "freedom".  By many measures, there was much
less you could do with your money back then.  Many of the things
that are popular among the rich to do today, hadn't been invented
yet.

I will agree, though, that there is more money for science in years
when there is more economic growth.  However, that's a much
different problem than economic freedom.

If your argument is that the "high" tax rates and regulations of
today are constraining people from using it to create wealth, that
claim has been examined in depth - in the halls of Congress, in
universities across the globe, on blogs galore - and found to be
false.  People will invest in what they think will benefit them.  A
higher tax rate, it has been observed many times (perhaps most
famously, recently, by Warren Buffet), does not tend to change
any investor's mind about whether or how to invest.