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"I know that our budgets are already creaking under the load of our spending and entitlement programs [..]"

It worries me how that assumption is never challenged even by people who "would absolutely love to see a taxpayer-funded initiative ". The deficit-mania narrative is really hegemonic nowadays.

I was going to say something similar. We could do a lot of good just by shoveling more money to NSF and other established programs, like Obama did in the stimulus. It's a tiny fraction of the federal budget.

You can build a million roads and learn almost nothing. You can send a single probe to Venus and learn enough to fill entire books and launch a thousand careers.

Some things have higher yields than others.

I don't think we need to cut programs, I just think that our current programs aren't administered effectively. We spend trillions and it seems like there's just so much graft and waste.

Sure, but waste doesn't mean we're "creaking under their load," especially when it comes to entitlement programs. If we just wanted to double the amount we spend on science, energy, and the environment, we'd have some inefficiencies but make a small dent in the overall budget.

> it seems like there's just so much graft and waste.

I hear this claim, but I've never seen evidence of it. How much graft and waste is there? In which department?

Every large organization has some of it - name one that doesn't. I have yet to see evidence of how relatively efficient or uncorrupt the U.S. government is. I do know that anti-corruption groups generally rate it highly relative to other governments worldwide, but many of those governments are in poor countries with high corruption (the latter being a major cause of the former).

> our budgets are already creaking under the load of our spending and entitlement programs

Assuming you are talking about the U.S., AFAIK that is not true. The U.S. is the richest country in the history of the world, right now, and by a wide margin. Remember that under President Clinton, the U.S. government ran a surplus and the economy was booming. What changed?

* Large tax cuts for wealthy Americans, reducing revenue significantly

* Two long wars. I know Iraq cost over $1 trillion by itself.

* I think the prescription drug bill passed under Bush was very expensive

* The Great Recession, of course.

The U.S. is much richer now than when it ran that surplus. The main problem is not spending, but revenue. Republicans (not to be partisan on HN, but they are the ones doing it) keep cutting revenue (taxes) and then saying there is no money for anything.

> I know that our budgets are already creaking under the load of our spending and entitlement programs

Federal budget has been ~ 30-35% of GDP since the '80s, although there was a spike during the Great Recession for obvious reasons.

We currently produce far more PHD than "the system" can utilize, so I'd propose it would look like PHD/postdoc extended into retirement as a career as opposed to theoretically being a very narrow academic pyramid.

I wonder if admitting the system is defeated would result in fewer people being pushed into an already overcrowded system.

Essentially the new system would be a vow of poverty and childlessness until retirement, rather than the existing system pretending a high paying job or tenured slot is just around the corner.

You need a relationship with the uni profs such as a perma-phd or else they're worried about liability.

I've found from a lifetime of screwing around that clear thought is necessary and an engineers eye for compromise. Your groundbreaking neo-fitbit probably revolves around code and having an ugly board full of parts, or at least it starts there, long before it needs a 3-d printer of little plastic parts.

you seem somewhat unaware of the realities of how science is done. What is 'citizen science'? how is different from normal science?

""I want to buy $250 worth of resistors, capacitors, chips, wire, and breadboards to make a new kind of fitbit prototype""

Did you read the article? I'm sure new fitbit prototypes are great and all but..it in no way is blue skies or fundamental research (which is what the article argues we need more of).

"What's an average person who wants to get into science supposed to do, besides be independently wealthy?"

do what most people in science do...get a bachelor's degreee and a phd and then enter academia or industry, publish papers, read papers ,attend conferences, teach and mentor students. I don't think there are many scientists who self fund themselves.

"Sadly, my experience trying to get even a few hours' use of any sort of university equipment, whether supervised, paid, through night classes, or otherwise, has been met with absolute stonewalls. If you don't pay full tuition, you can fuck right off."

What type of hardware are you trying to get access to? what are your goals? Is it to produce new scientific knowledge? then you would probably be best served by going to grad school..

edit: however, one does not have to attend grad school to do useful research in exceptional circumstances. see chris olah at google deep brain.

edit: one does not even have to be all that young. look at yitang zhang

>I know that our budgets are already creaking under the load of our spending and entitlement programs

You are welcome to cut my social security and medicate "entitlements" but I've been paying into them for 20 years so be prepared to write me a check for every penny taken from me. Its not an "entitlement" if I've been forced to pay into it for decades. I would be very careful with that word if I was you as its politically charged.

Also the idea that "just throw more money" at a problem is tempting but often wrong. It won't bring some utopia it'll just bring a lot of grant chasers going after bureaucrats who need to get rid of the money. Is there evidence the sciences are actually underfunded? By what measure? And which research specifically. Also the "cant have 9 women make a baby in 1 month" truism applies. Throwing more resources at something doesn't necessarily lead to the outcome you expect.

"Throw more money" at things shouldn't be an unquestionable truth. We did this with college loans and now college is unbelievably expensive and education outcomes questionable, especially since we saw the equivalent of 'grant chasers' in education in the form of diploma mills.

> "Throw more money" at things shouldn't be an unquestionable truth. We did this with college loans and now college is unbelievably expensive

I think that's not the cause. I've seen research showing that tuition increases are strongly correlated with cuts in government funding for higher education.

If there's some government program that hands out up to x amount of dollars for product y, then product y will quickly cost x amount of dollars.Education cuts have nothing to do with this.

If anything colleges are rolling in money. If they aren't providing resources needed for their staff, then thats something staff needs to take up with the college. Blaming the government because these colleges just keep dumping money into their vast endowments is fairly ridiculous. Gutting my medicare and social security to preserve endowments is asinine.

https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2015/07/13/finan...

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/09/08/student_loans...

Those are interesting theories, but do you have any support for these statements? They don't match what I understand, the facts (taxpayer support for higher education has has been cut widely), and what research I've seen shows.

EDIT: Regarding the links you added (thanks):

* The Slate article says, based on a study, it might be possible that student loan availability could be increasing the cost of college, but it's only a possibility. The article also says that among the biggest culprits are for-profit institutions and advocates blanket funding of higher education as a solution, a la Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

* The New York Fed link is to the study covered by the Slate article.

* The Forbes page doesn't want to load.

I don't see that as backing much of the parent comment. Also I'll note that a great proportion of funding for higher education is not via student loans, but taxpayer funding for research and for public universities and colleges.

>You are welcome to cut my social security and medicate "entitlements" but I've been paying into them for 20 years so be prepared to write me a check for every penny taken from me. Its not an "entitlement" if I've been forced to pay into it for decades.

Yeah, that's not how it works. Your money is gone and isn't coming back, and the Supreme Court ruled that you have literally zero right to anything. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_v._Nestor )

Can you clarify what you mean by "creaking"?