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.

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.

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 San Francisco is notorious for earthquakes, which severely limits how tall buildings can be safely built, right? See 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Well, sure. But then, we can assume that Venezuelan democracy isn't so different from our own. Most likely they voted for it not because it was wonderful, but because it was the least bad choice on the ballot. Just because you get to vote, doesn't necessarily mean you get to vote for what you want.

"The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in “Metcalfe’s law”–which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants–becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s."

--Paul Krugman, 1998

When collapse comes, it comes quickly.

"The reason why collapse, especially that caused by socialism, is so utterly complete is that the damage remains hidden for so long. The design margin is used up; savings are depleted; the institutions are hollowed out; public morality becomes perverted and education becomes nothing but a credential — and it all happens out of the public eye. Only when everything is used up, as in Venezuela, when the whole edifice implodes, as if by magic, does the cumulative effect become manifest."