Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
But this hasn't really changed. Even in NASA's hey day space missions weren't government-only projects - The space capsules and Saturn V were built by contracted private firms like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, North American Aviation. Nothing really has changed in that regard - NASA is still contracting private companies, only now we have an American company, SpaceX, that can not only build a rocket, but design and launch one as well.
Ultimately having innovators like SpaceX who can contract out to more than just the American government will drive the cost of spaceflight down. This can only be a good thing, in my book.
Musk is doing the same thing with electric cars. As far as I can tell the only way we're going to get highly reliable, affordable, mainstream electric vehicle in the next ten years is because of his vanity project, Tesla.
I mean, I'm as skeptical as anyone about pinning the future hopes of humanity on a few extremely rich people. But it's also comforting that incredibly wealthy people like Elon Musk are preoccupied with how to benefit humanity, and not just themselves.
I've often wondered why big corporations, as marketing, don't finance something like launching another Hubble space telescope. The corporate logo would go on the side, the corporation could host a conference to collect and analyze the results, it would be fantastic PR (instead of those silly commercials and celebrity endorsements they spend so much money on).
It's because flagship spacecraft and things like the LHC are projects that require a budget of several billions and a 25-year commitment. This kind of budget is within reach only of a wealthy nation with stable finances and a stable political system.
I think the budget explanation also explains the pharmco crisis. It takes about a billion and a decade to bring a drug to market, and that's why you see statins, antidepressants and antidiabetics in the pipeline. Meanwhile, antibiotic resistances are going to be a public health crisis, and Chagas disease, sleeping sickness and malaria are major killers in the developing world. A new model is needed here; we don't need to try coroprate sponsorship in space when it's already failing on Earth.
The LHC, yes, various probes, no. I read that the beachball Mars lander was $250m. Another Hubble could be built for far less than the original, because it is a known design.
These are well within the abilities of many billionaires and their corporations.
The real mission was Spirit and Opportunity, and those two are a giant success. With USD 900 million the price tag is four times higher, and this is getting out of reach of even the ultrawealthy.
Consider also the billions thrown around for acquisitions.
And consider that the rovers were on the national news for months. What's that kind of PR worth?
I realize that they are creating demand for millions and millions of cells, but cell phones, tablets and laptops have been doing that for a decade now.
I'm not sure why you're calling SpaceX a vanity project. The company is already profitable, and if things play out like Musk is planning the company stands to make a lot of money. That's not a vanity project; that's a business.
Now, a Mars shot would be a vanity project if it were self-financed. But I doubt it will happen if taxpayers aren't willing to pay for it.
Driving down costs isn't the issue...
But it's also a lack of will because we don't have a rival as formidable as Russia threatening to beat us to the punch. Well, at least not at the moment. Russia looks more and more like it has the desire to play the role again - the desire, but probably not the ability. And if that's true, there's always China. In fact I wouldn't be totally surprised if China's increasing interest in space were the thing that finally got Americans to Mars.
But failing that, what's going to get us to commit the resources to a risky mission like travelling to Mars? A trip whose only reward is first saying we've been there, and only down the road a few decades the ability to colonize it and mine its natural resources?
The only thing more powerful in the nation's mind than projecting military power is money...and maybe that will be enough to get us there....
In fact, I would argue the moon landings were a mistake, in that we spent a whole lot of money building a system that did one useless but amazing thing instead of spending less money figuring out how to give ourselves the capability to do lots of useful and amazing things at a reasonable cost.
If Elon Musk wants to pay for a Mars trip I'll cheer him on, but nobody's ever been able to articulate a compelling reason for it. A trillion dollars is a lot of money, and I'd rather see it go toward tax cuts or paying down the national debt.
Driving down costs is not only an issue, it's the primary issue. If we have to pay $10k per kg to get stuff into LEO none of the activities that would support a permanent presence in space are worth doing.
Donating money and having your name on a University building, that might be vanity, but more importantly charity. Let's not put mundane judgements on such niceties.
But investing in and aiding in the realization of an operation that comes close to bankrupting and ruining you, that's not vanity, that's a man achieving his dreams and life goals. I'm sure he's flattered and proud of being compared to Iron Man, but I don't think "be likened to Iron Man" is as high on his bucket list as "change the world for the better" is.
Bell Labs was a private corporation.
The #1, #2 richest Americans have specifically targeted funding research for diseases that affect only the poor. I think this is a more valid criticism of the NIH rather than philanthropists.
1. http://www.umich.edu/~csfound/545/1995/land05.jpg
2. http://www.drugabuse.gov/sites/default/files/images/colorbox...
Also, artificial pancreases are in the trial stage.
Oh how quickly journalists forget the past. The only reason we ever became a scientific superpower in the first place is because of one man, John D. Rockefeller.
Do you mean classical physics and mechanics, quantum mechanics (and if so, what branch), particle physics, solid-state physics, what?
You have to be more specific unless you want to come off as just another -~= Science! =~- people getting off to things they don't actually understand.
Voting for stat-mech almost seems like cheating :)
A huge portion of physics is driven by basic curiosity, has no commercial applications in the near future, and is so esoteric that even other physicists have to work very hard just to understand what's going on. Much of this stuff will wind up being dead-ends, but some of it is the foundation the future will be built on top of. No trained physicist currently alive can predict what will change the world and what won't. Why should we let people whose only qualification is money try to decide what's important?
https://fundamentalphysicsprize.org/
Or the Nobel Prize before that, funded based on inventions in explosives (used for mining, construction, and armament), and to a lesser extent through Alfred's father's and brothers innovations in plywood, the torpedo, oil refining and international finance / business.
The public gets the benefit of inventions that wouldn't have existed without this investment (assuming they're marketed in the short term, and in the long term the patents eventually fall into the public domain).
Or alternatively, if billionaires start doing more research, this could be offset by cutting, or slowing the growth of, taxpayer-funded research spending. And give the money back to taxpayers in the form of tax cuts, deferred tax hikes, or different services.
Also, there's less of the waste and uncertainty associated with government spending (think about how many articles you see on long-running science experiments disrupted by Washington's latest budget spasm; if Gates has dumped $100 million into AIDS research and needs $100 million more to produce a vaccine, he's probably going to follow through).
And if things go awry the fallout's not as bad (if Solyndra had happened to some billionaire spending his own money, I don't think anyone would have been outraged).
This is actively not true. The eradication of small pox was an international, government-led effort. That we have since abdicated that ability doesn't mean we "can't", just that we have chosen not to.
The walls of the ivory tower of science collapsed when bureaucrats realized that there were jobs to be had and money to be made in the administration and promotion of science. Governments began making big investments just prior to World War II...
Science was going to determine the balance of power in the postwar world. Governments went into the science business big time.
Scientists became administrators of programs that had a mission. Probably the most important scientific development of the twentieth century is that economics replaced curiosity as the driving force behind research...
James Buchanan noted thirty years ago - and he is still correct - that as a rule, there is no vested interest in seeing a fair evaluation of a public scientific issue. Very little experimental verification has been done to support important societal issues in the closing years of this century...
People believe these things...because they have faith."
-From Kary Mullis, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner (and the genius inventor of PCR) in an excellent essay in his book "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field".
Other than that, I have no concerns.
In any case, as a scientist that's exactly the kind of competition I want to see more of!
as comparison, the pay for a professor here is 50k a year, but can be more. you heard that right, that's what a bsc in low pay southern states gets.
he said the following thing which made me rethink the whole thing a little:
"conversely i get to research anything i want to, and i don't have to worry about pleasing business with my research results"
germany though has a big problem of americanization like so many other countries.
i've heard of so many research in the us getting shut down, or the researchers discredited, because they pissed off the wrong company funding the department they were working for.
it's a double edged sword.
EDIT: it's funny this got downvoted. i was personally involved in evaluating software that was written for the DHS by a huge contractor SAIC. they paid 20+ million for that piece of junk, and my supervisor was scared of passing on the assessment, because they were scared we would lose opportunities on further grants(they were impressed by the assessment, apparently we were the only ones that did such a thorough assessment).
i never said professors in germany don't have to get research money or grants, but they are way less dependent on what outcome the industry dictates.
this is not always the case as you can see from the nepomuk thing[1]
but to further strengthen your point, in europe program code or implementation is not considered research. european scientific funding is reserved for research, so a lot of the research you see will never be turned into viable products. that notion also exists in german universities. universities of applied sciences see this differently, but people sometimes joke that these are not real universities.
a lot of what was turned into money is actually european inventions. most americans, don't even know that europe has a lead in neuroscience research(that includes countries like spain). or at least used to, most americans also don't know how great the cs dpt of the tu wien(vienna) is for example.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEPOMUK_(framework) rdf based semantic metadata thingie with a cost of 17 million that is now being ditched partly because it's rdf
Science and knowledge belongs to everybody and to no one, regardless of where you are from. Nationalism was pretty fancy and efficient a long time ago, if I see myself as more "American" or "French", than "human", humanity is screwed.
What distinguishes American science, and why is this distinction important?
this isn't one of the article's complaints, but one distinguishing characteristics of american science funding -- indeed, of the u.s. govt's entire budget -- is disproportionate spending on the military. see the chart at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_policy_of_the_United_St...
anyway, i agree with most of the other comments as i don't see anything seriously wrong with private investment in science. perhaps the fact that these are individuals rather than committees is what the author finds most loathsome, but my perspective is probably biased b/c the first thing that came to mind on reading the title was the allen institute for brain science, that's the first example in the article, and i think it's doing interesting and important research.
that said, this is entirely unsurprising since scientific and mathematics research were almost entirely patronized fields until the rise of the modern university. this is very similar to computing in that first monolithic centralized computing was the path, then it was the PC, then it was the cloud, now it's moving back to a decentralized network. these things are bound to yo-yo and academic research is no different than most human-designed processes.
If you have cookies off when you click the link it redirects to the login page.
That being said, I probably wouldn't read more than 20 articles a month on the NYTimes either - just the occasional one posted to HN that catches my interest.
For example, reallocate defense spending to pure scientific research.
Partly because I think we no longer feel much of a need to prove we're better in science/tech than a major rival, which was once the Soviets, so general science/tech advancement is a harder sell.
Isn't China a new "dangerous" competitor?
Whatever happened to America being the land of the free? When did it turn into the land of cutting down tall poppies?
So no, I do not celebrate their success and I will judge them sharply for profiting so handsomely from public investment.
And don't give me crap about how we benefit too. If our economy was working as a free market that the same billionaires feel it should, they coudn't be billionaires.
Profit has no space in "real" free markets.
Long term profit has no space in models of a _perfectly competitive_ market, a theoretical concept used in the exploration of various economic ideas. The "free"ness of a market doesn't necessarily imply anything about the potential for profit within that market.
I mean look at the technologies they built. Largest people tracker (Google) and largest communication graph (Facebook). Look at the current web technologies and the massive centralization of technology.
Let the government turn off the money spigot, and silicon valley will be bankrupt in a week.
Oh really? And when was the last time you attempted to do what these people do? Easy to judge sitting from an armchair, isn't it?
While you're at it, why don't you stop using any of the products that these people create? And stop using any of the products created by people using their products? Why don't you stop patronising for instance any business that uses Microsoft or Oracle software? Let's see how much choice that leaves you.
>They are also on the backs of the American people who contribute significant amount of money through government sponsorship.
The American government decided to use public resources to fund research without attempting to monopolise the application of results. If you don't like the fact that people have created successful businesses and products with this, you should blame the government, not the people who took risks and brought the applications to market. You don't get to hold out your hand and ask for something back when you gave it away for free in the first place.
>I will judge them sharply for profiting so handsomely from public investment.
Perhaps you should be judged too. After all, aren't you this very moment enjoying the internet? Isn't your enjoyment of it, its enrichment of your life (even potentially your dependence on it for your economic niche) a profit of your own? And how much have you decided to donate to the government as compensation for this profit from your use of the fruits of public research funding?
>Profit has no space in "real" free markets.
I suggest you educate yourself in basic economics before making such stupid claims.
I am just too honest damned. and just too damn nice to attempt to do what these people do.
Remember the Simpsons episode with Bill Gates where he says "I didn't get rich by writing checks!"
And why the hell are you defending those people? Do you wish to be one of those one day? What is in it for you to spend time with a dope like me sniffing their shit?
What kind of drivel is that? If you create a product/service which nobody else can duplicate and the demand for it is there, you are going to make a profit. That's exactly how a "real" free market functions.
In other words, fuck man, capitalists hate markets. They would prefer that you don't have a choice but to buy from them.
Keeping secrets is only one option. Another is the cost to duplicate. Your myopic understanding of manufacturing processes likely cannot be alleviated in the comments section here, but just consider that the cost to build certain chip fab plants is up in the billions and takes years to build. Once the first entity builds that, it is guaranteed a profit for at least the number of years it takes to build a duplicate manufacturing process. This is true under any definition of a real free market, making your assertion false.
>In other words, fuck man, capitalists hate markets.
Nope, you mean incumbents hate markets. I think you need to revisit the definition of a capitalist. A real capitalist dreams of when they can come in with a better price/service/product and unseat the incumbents.
Wasn't that, in at least part, the reason why government felt the investment was worth making? To fund (expensive) basic research that can then be taken to drive and create enterprise?
"Wasn't that, in at least part, the reason why WE felt the investment was worth making? To fund (expensive) basic research that can then be taken to drive and create enterprise?"
and let me finish it off for you.
"that can then be taken to drive and create enterprise so that we can pay out the ass for everything we buy so that a couple of snakes can have billions."
The reality is the government made that decision behind our backs. Nobody asked you and me. They made that decision to pad the pockets of their friends. They are just administrators after all.
The article is about the balance of funding -- how much of it is private, and how much of it is public. Nobody is claiming that rich people shouldn't be allowed to fund vanity science projects.
"Balance of funding" is a cute euphemism though for "let's punish rich people for exercising their free choice, steal more of their money and give it to bureaucrats and congressmen in the White House to squabble over and divert into kickbacks for districts and lobbyists." Because everyone knows the government's track record of wise use of funds is so fantastic.
Well let us look at these rich people, on the Forbes 400 richest list. So people can celebrate success and encourage people to emulate the successful.
#1 Bill Gates - had a million dollar trust fund from his bank president grandfather, mother on United Way board with president of IBM #2 Warren Buffett - father was a congressman, grandparents owned a chain of stores in Nebraska #3 Larry Ellison - after a middle class upbringing, he was inspired by a 1970 CACM article and proceeded to hit several home runs over the the next few decades #4 Charles Koch - inherited an oil company #5 David Koch - inherited an oil company #6 Christy Walton - inherited Wal-Mart #7 Jim Walton - inherited Wal-Mart ...and the rest of the Wal-Mart heirs...
Aside from Larry Ellison, all of these people were to the manor born. Telling people to "emulate their success" is ludicrous. Plenty of people are paid good money to tell us why we should "celebrate success" for these people, and should try to "emulate the successful". Anyone who would actually believe these people's press clippings is clearly a fool. They have the same kind of "success" the czar in Russia had - they were born into it.
I worked for a contemporary of Microsoft at the time. We had better technology, knew microcomputers upside down, had better everything, except had no vision. And that company was booted from nothing.
Oh brother. Most of these people started out in life ahead of the average person, sure. But you know what, they all took what they started with in life and worked their asses off to build it into something even greater. I'm sure for every person on this list there's ten people who started with a silver spoon in their mouth, and through sloth and weakness blew everything. Some probably wound up on the streets.
And have you looked into the family histories of these successful people? How many of these families started off with members who had nothing, who worked hard and made it? Does it invalidate their original success that they were smart enough to build a family culture which preserved and built upon success? Oh, I suppose that's another thing we shouldn't bother trying to emulate.
But hey, let's not bother trying to build a representative sample base for our snide claims eh?
Bill Gates may have come from privilege, but then he built on that - he brought computing to the world, introduced untold economic efficiencies to every single industry on earth, and produced more economic growth arguably than any other single individual in the last century. Buffett again worked hard, made smart bets, took risks, and it paid off. Ellison you admit invalidates your hypothesis. Koch I'm not familiary with. The Waltons have obviously been working diligently because last I heard Walmart was a powerhouse that millions of Americans choose of their own free will to shop at every day.
Comparing Bill Gates and the others on this list to a blatantly parasitic ruling class extracting resources from the toil of slaves through a monopoly on state violence is just plain, unforgivable idiocy.
I would expect better from the audience of a website devoted to the idea that anyone who has a valuable idea and works hard can make something of themselves.
In what reality could the act of taking a million dollars and multiplying it by a factor of seventy six thousand be viewed as being "born into it"?
He was a natural leader, but you can't just start out as a CEO unless you have a product or service to offer. Bill Gates couldn't have had time to build his software if he had to work daily to put himself through school (to have access to the computer).
Starting with a million dollars is no different than starting with 100 million, it all depends on how good the person is at spotting opportunity, learning from mistakes, and manipulating (not in a bad way) people to help you build your empire.
At the time you didn't have to be rich to be a computer enthusiast. Silicon Valley was full of average Joes who had breadboarded up a simple computer but couldn't figure out what to do with it. Gates may have had more trouble if his family was at the very bottom end of the income spectrum, but computer geekery was a middle class thing. Literally millions of people could have done the same.
>He was a natural leader, but you can't just start out as a CEO unless you have a product or service to offer.
That's just nonsense. Anybody can be a CEO - you just need to start a corporation. When Gates and Allen started Microsoft it was just the two of them. There was no product either. This is all on the wiki page, by the way.
>Bill Gates couldn't have had time to build his software if he had to work daily to put himself through school (to have access to the computer).
That might be true except that he dropped out of school as soon as the company was founded.
>Starting with a million dollars is no different than starting with 100 million, it all depends on how good the person is at spotting opportunity, learning from mistakes, and manipulating (not in a bad way) people to help you build your empire.
You don't need a million dollars to start a company, and lots of now-powerful companies were started with far less. Apple, for instance. If Gates was lucky it was because he came of age in a time where computers were changing so fast there were more opportunities for small, agile companies. But that was true of his entire generation.