The "waste" in the startup industry has corrective mechanisms built in. Investors can pull their money out and take their business elsewhere.
Taxpayers cannot pull their money out of the NSF and reallocate it to a different government agency.
Taxpayers cannot pull their money out of the NSF and reallocate it to a different government agency.
So I’m ok if we spend $1.2M on research. That’s like 5 developers for one year who would otherwise be allocated by the invisible hand into effectively useless endeavors like high frequency trading or ad tech.
Cut to the alternative universe where they’re working at Blackrock and a car thief is driving their car away.
I'm not. Where do I opt out of funding government grants?
At least I can decide not invest in something if I don't want to risk losing money.
(remember that government spending basically created transistorized logic, microchips, and computer networking as we know them today. would you have opted out of those too?)
If you're on HN in the first place, there is an approximately zero percent chance that the few dollars of your tax money spent on this kind of research hold a candle to the benefits you've gained from it.