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Comment by asciimov | Hacker News Reader

> There are always more people wanting to do science than what is available in funding.

So why not just fund them?

Any process you could create or that currently exists just ends up being gamed by people who understand how to get funding.

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There are no ways around that. You cannot feasibly make funding infinite nor do anything about the lack of political will for increasing research funding. Even if funding was to increase dramatically, you'd get people coming up with even more expensive research projects (new particle accelerator anyone?) and there would still be winners and losers of that funding game.

There's also the fact that a PI minting dozens of PhD over their careers, especially in fields with limited industry opportunities, inherently produces a pyramidal scheme that is bound to push people away from science.

Why not?

We seem to have no problem with infinite funding for Department of Defense and to bail out banks. The amount needed for science is paltry by comparison and typically has much better long term return on investment.

It would be far more fair to say that we have no problem with infinite funding for non-discretionary entitlement spending, since that's most of that the Federal Government spends money on. Military spending in the US is not wildly outside of the norm for the developed world as a percentage of GDP, and money spent to "bail out banks" is a rounding error in terms of spending, and has historically turned a profit for the Federal Government. One of the largest sources of research funding in the US is actually the Department of Defense.

As for why research doesn't get more funding, sadly there is a faction in the US government that is opposed to universities and to government spending in general, and views research funding as easy to cut without provoking public outcry among their core voting demographics. This is the same reason that the Department of Defense is now such a large part of research funding, that same voting demographic is far more vocally opposed to reducing military spending.

What is entitlement spending?

These?

"Social Security and Medicare are sometimes called "entitlements," because people meeting relevant eligibility requirements are legally entitled to benefits, although most pay taxes into these programs throughout their working lives."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_Sta...

Pretty much, “entitlement” isn’t a technical term but it refers to government spending on pre-defined benefit programs. A better term above might have been Non-discretionary Spending, but most of it is entitlement spending. And yes, Social Security and Medicare are the two most significant components, followed by Medicaid as the third. Those three plus interest on debt constitute the majority of the federal budget.

For sure. I was just trying to be sneaky and point out that we pay taxes for our "entitlements" so even though it's an accepted term, I think it's an inaccurate one and implies things about the programs people call "entitlement" programs which aren't true.

The funding for the military is far from infinite, and the US is actually pretty "privileged" as far as how much money trickles down to grants for seemingly unrelated stuff through DARPA and other similar agencies.

The discussion on how much money should be allocated to research is a different one, and it's always going to be finite. In the end, funds for research as conducted in universities have to be extracted from societal economic outputs, be it from taxes or otherwise, which is sadly not infinite.

You don't need to make funding infinite, in order to meet the current demand for it.

And increasing funding will not increase demand in lockstep. There are indeed more people who want to do science then there is money allocated to pay them, but the number of those people is not going to vastly increase if 'researcher' continues to be a job that requires years of post-secondary education, has long, shitty hours, and pays peanuts.

Well if the goal is to fund everyone, the pressures that ensure it “ requires years of post-secondary education, has long, shitty hours, and pays peanuts” will likely reduce.

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