On Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 20:42:50 (-0600) Carrol Cox writes: >Bill Lear wrote: >> >> Interestingly, I just last night watched a bit of the PBS show "The >> Journey to Palomar", about the building of the huge Hale telescope on >> Mount Palomar, a staggeringly long-lived and risky project. It was >> funded by capitalists (Yerkes, Rockefeller, Carnegie), but was not for >> profit as far as I know. > >That wasn't investment, it was personal consumption. Same as donatins to >the Metropolitan Museum of Art or to the building fund at the University >of Chicago.
It wasn't investment for profit, but it certainly was taking a huge risk with a ton of money for a far-off goal that, in this case, would not greatly benefit themselves personally, but would benefit science generally. Michael's point was that capitalists are often very reluctant to do these things within the marketplace. My point is that they sometimes do it in spectacular fashion outside of it. Bill _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
