Comment Re:Just imagine "if" (Score 1) 347
Everyone knows that all bureaucrats are fired and new ones hired whenever the administration changes.
Not really. Take it from a professional bureaucrat.
Everyone knows that all bureaucrats are fired and new ones hired whenever the administration changes.
Not really. Take it from a professional bureaucrat.
Why is it that every magazine with "business" in the title always turns out to be to the left of Stalin?
"Autocracy is universal and cannot be repealed, only concealed."
--Mencius Moldbug
We'll, maybe they can't all be coders.... But I'm sure there are plenty of openings for liberal arts professors.
It's not a matter of whether cancer research needs Watson, it's a matter of IBM having dumped a large amount of R&D dollars into a solution in search of a problem. This is merely a last-ditch effort to make it pay off.
Wonder what the problem is? You tell me....
I strongly suspect the Greenspan comment was a veiled sarcasm that didn't quite register in print. Income equality has never struck me as being one of his primary concerns.
Unfortunately, beheading Charles didn't end well for the English, either. Note that that was their last experiment with a republic.
And you're assuming government funded research isn't conducted the same way? Haha.
What if the Billionaire WANTS a certain answer and lets the scientist know it, so that the "data" can be published for a huge return on investment for the billionaire? Tobacco industry did this.
Or maybe billionaire just has an answer he emotionally wants to hear and funds science to get that instead of sensible science? If Jenny McCarthy had billions what sort of research d'you think she might fund?
Or what if billionaire wants research on life extending treatments for him and him alone and screw publishing?
I don't see any compelling reason billionare science would be any better than publicly funded science. I'd rather everyone own the results, too, than a billionaire.
I mean, one thing a billionare is VERY good at is hoarding good things (money) for themselves AREN'T THEY.
--PeterM
And the incentives of the people deciding which research will get public funding differ exactly how? You seem to start with the assumption that the career bureaucrat won't dispose of assets under his control to his greatest advantage whereas the career businessman will. I'm not seeing it.
Private companies just don't need the sorts of skills that the typical person has. Nobody wants to hire an average programmer (at least, not at US wages), or an average marketer, etc. Today we have hyper-specialization and if you're in the top 1% of whatever you do you'll have a job for life, and if not you'll be lucky to ever have a job. We're still in transition, but all the trends are there.
We life in a country which has a huge economy, and yet tons of people who are unemployed.
Oddly enough, a libertarian economist, Tyler Cowan, wrote a book that agrees with you. Average is Over.
In principle, I agree. But that only holds true as long as management is correctly evaluating what and who is performing efficiently. Judging from IBM's performance and stock price, management is not doing so hot at making that judgement.
That's also a nice thing about markets. They not only punish inefficiency, they also punish stupid management. It may take a while, but eventually the chickens come home to roost.
While government shouldn't protect the inefficient employees, it shouldn't protect incompetent management, either.
Also, economic efficiency isn't everything. Would you be comfortable offshoring industries our national defense is dependent on, even if economic efficiencies could be obtained by doing so?
Uh, you do know building can be built 'vertically' right? We've been doing that since the early 1900s.
Uh, you do know San Francisco is notorious for earthquakes, which severely limits how tall buildings can be safely built, right? See 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
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