FWIW, I thought you were spot on re: the topic. It seems to me that it doesn't matter whether the big money is from the government or the private sector. Big money implies things like big returns, cutting patients to fit tables, etc. Regardless of who employs the bureaucrat, their @ss is on the line if the money is deemed wasted. And if the money is _big_, then the risk is high.
What I tried to do with my comment that innovation is actually funded by the individuals who do the work... my point was that big money is a corrupting thing, no matter what the source. What some see as copycat, lack of genuine, innovation in privately funded "innovation", I see a similar (perhaps worse) copycat, lack of genuine, innovation in publicly funded "innovation". My opinion has grown worse the more exposure I have to "R21" research grant reviews. <http://grants.nih.gov/grants/funding/r21.htm>
Were I King, I would mandate public and private funding to be smaller, with faster iterations, muchmuchmuch less time spent reviewing applications, and a focus more on upstream innovation. The trouble is estimating who will benefit from any rewards that ensue from supporting some upstream thing?
In some ways, it's akin to giving money to homeless people you meet on the street versus tithing to, say, the United Way. Do you like your philanthropy organic or institutionalized? Do you have stultifying expectations when you give away your dollar? Or do you give it away and think of it as a _gift_?
Although I haven't participated, I think we can learn quite a bit from the outright generosity shown by Kickstarter participants. Of course, it does bring out a few j@ck@ss3s who, in a hard-core way, expect to get something in exchange for the $20 bucks they "donated" ... kinda like expecting that tote bag when you give money to NPR.
On 03/04/2014 08:31 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
I apologize for getting a little off topic from the original point being made here: My rail is against two things, UberScale Science and the loss/limitation/coopting of Government Funding of Science. While the free market has some magic to it, there are times when an entity charged with improvement of the commons (Government?) can add a qualitative and important difference to the pursuit of knowledge (Scientific or otherwise). I think today that there may be plenty of Government funding for science if so much of it wasn't one flavor of Pork or another.
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