<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
http-equiv="Content-Type">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
On 04/10/2012 16:43, Stefano Vaj wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAPoR7a4eRj_oNBNn7j7n2TU6tf4_fH_LHCudXS45MwkyX+hrTg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">On 3 October 2012 23:49, David Lubkin <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:lubkin@unreasonable.com" target="_blank">lubkin@unreasonable.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
More generally,<br>
what can any society do with a temporary (years or decades,<br>
not longer) surge of cash to create a sustainable advantage?<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
Hey, is this question really asked on a transhumanist ml? :-)<br>
<br>
R&D.<br>
<br>
Sure, it remains to be seen which R&D programmes should
prioritised.<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
R&D is also a public good to a large extent. There is no doubt
that a good university or research facility has spillover effects
nearby - you have a good chance of getting a few spin-off companies,
the local intelligentia may trigger a Richard Florida-type creative
class cluster, and you get a public with higher human capital. But
the R&D results can be hard to harness locally: many places find
that their findings produce useful benefits far away, but not
locally. Sweden, for example, is doing lots of good R&D but due
to a lack of entreprenurship most patents and companies end up
abroad. If you only care about the total good, this might not be a
problem, but I suspect the recipients of windfalls are not total
altruists.<br>
<br>
Typically investing in human capital has good returns: even if
people go abroad to work, remittances to families back home are
worth a lot (more than all foreign aid in total, in fact). Similarly
for institutional capital: rule of law, predictable and effective
regulations, higher trust are good things for any society, and tends
to give a cumulative advantage. That can also be done with
relatively little money - in fact, huge influxes of money in a
society with weak institutional capital is a recipe for corruption.
<br>
<br>
If you are going to invest in R&D, my current pet opinion is
that the return per dollar spent is much higher in underresearched
and totally new areas than any mature areas. So you might want to
invest in a lot of little wild projects in the hope that one or two
takes off, rather than spend it all on something obviously
worthwhile but well researched. It works for venture capitalists. <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University </pre>
</body>
</html>