> So I don’t think it’s fair to claim it’s sustained by constantly tricking new members into turning over assets.
Thanks for the correction.
NGOs and non-profits have only a 30% failure rate at 10 years supposedly.
So by the mark of survival rate you’re using we should be actually looking to NGOs and non-profits.
Obviously that would be silly and I’m not arguing that communism where everyone earns the same is a workable system at scale. It’s not for obvious reasons.
But the only options aren’t wild extremes. You could imagine a market economy with a strong social safety net. You could imagine strong unions and worker protections. You could imagine the responsibility of the company executives being the employees and customers over the shareholders. You could imagine that businesses over a certain size get government inspectors and ombudsman automatically assigned to check if there’s any malfeasance going on. There could be stricter laws around private market funds entering the political system. You could imagine national wealth funds for tech like Norway has for natural resources. Etc etc etc. our current capitalist system in the US is a choice and there’s no reason it needs to be set up the way it is from a sustainability perspective. Indeed, by every conceivable evidence the country is treating itself apart.
And bringing us back on topic, you could imagine scientists creating the priorities and funding allocations for science projects without having to justify it to the politicians and military industrial complex.
You could envision all kinds of things. That doesn't mean they'll work.
The free market US has done much better environmentally than socialist countries.
Anyone wanting research funding is going to have to justify it, regardless of the system that is set up. Just imagine you set aside $1 billion and opened it up to anybody with a research idea and no vetting of their ideas. The money will disappear in a moment, and you'll get zero research results.