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Comment by tacocataco | Hacker News Reader

I often think about what could be if artists and scientists were free to explore their crafts and passions.

What are we missing out on because it's not profitable right now?

Well if it isn't profitable it isn't desirable by society enough?

Often you have chains of invention, where it's not obvious from the outset that a specific outcome can be achieved by making that specific discovery or invention.

Other issues are cases where the profit to society is clear, but difficult to capture by any specific group (the reason why infrastructure is mostly built by governments), and cases where discoveries happen by chance because somebody was given the chance to "screw around" (for example the person who found the xz vulnerability probably couldn't have justified why he put engineering time into investigating a 0.5 second delay).

Do you actually truly deep down believe this? You don't look around and see a single valueable thing that isn't profitable?

Or see highly profitable things that aren't valuable, or that are even highly damaging?

That's a very bad take. Things have value even if they're not profitable. Do you think the pharaohs built the pyramids because they were profitable? Look how important they are to the world culture.

The pyramids were a power demonstration. Probably indirectly profitable. Some unespoken threat like

Fake> I ordered them to build the pyramid. If you revolt I will order them to pillage your village. Have a nice day and please send 20% more goats.

The most familiar thing to compare the pyramids to is probably European cathedrals. They were huge public works projects requiring a lot of labour, both skilled and unskilled, and done for religous, political, and probably economic reasons.

Interesting choice of example as far as ROI calculations go

Sure, it's got a positive ROI now, but most artist don't have 4,000 years to let their art appreciate in value.

> world culture

Do people in 2024 really care about the pyramids?

It's hard to fund things where the benefit is diffused among many people. Lighthouses are a classic example of this (you can enjoy their benefit even if you don't pay!). So is public art (why should I pay for public sculptures for everybody else?).

Taxes are a traditional approach to this. It's sloppy and imperfect (plenty of my money is spent on stuff I don't value), but I don't know a much better way.

Similarly, it's hard to price things where the negative externalities are diffused among many people. Pollution is a good example of this - the person generating pollution is often not the one suffering the effects of it, and the effects are generally widespread and diffuse (your car makes a thousand people a little bit worse off, not a single person horribly worse off). Taxes on these externalities are also an appropriate tool here.

You gotta think about profitability across a larger timescale. Some things aren’t profitable now, but will be later, and if we get started on them now we can make that later come sooner.

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