That's the way it should be, IMO. Government research leads to things like WMDs.
Mine is: You're probably a troll and nobody should feed you.
How does your post support this opinion?
Penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming as part of research in a public institution (St. Mary's Hospital). [2]
I guess my larger point (which you deftly avoided addressing) is that the government is not a boogeyman creating evil technologies nor does it have a monopoly on evil shit. I also have a hard time imagining a motive for a for-profit organization to eradicate a disease world-wide. Something that government organizations have achieved almost twice (polio is nearly wiped out).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennicilin#Discovery
But you know, whatever...
This is rubbish, because it also funds research that leads to medicine, better roads and health, the Internet, and all number of other things that are absolutely positive things. The balance is by far on the good, not the bad.
Private research brought us things like the Maxim gun, the Gatling gun, most of the shitty food you can buy today, lots of unhealthy chemicals, and all sorts of other things.
It's a comparison that, even if executed properly, is hard to make--and you failed to execute.
Google. Facebook.
I'm not trying to minimize what the NSA has done; what they do is supposedly done in our name, which is offensive, and they have more power than any company to do harm with what they collect, which is frightening. And I'm not trying to attack the companies; they have every right to what I give them, most of which is not private even if I would wish it to be, and they do provide useful services with that information.
But if you are upset about an organization collecting information to use in some way that may be other than your best interest, the two are pretty equal.
Gestapo. Stasi.
WMD is such a stupid thing to bandy about, anyways--how many more are killed with cigarettes and cars than have died from these superweapons that rot in silos and labs?
PRISM, as somebody else has pointed out, is a stupid example because massive data mining is literally the business model for vast swathes of industry.
Just stop.
that's the sort of charming naïveté I look for in a date.
The original comment listed some issues with free-market financing but gov backing is not suddenly more altruistic/fair because it's not coordinated by 'free-market' billionaires. There are many many billionaires (and billion-dollar companies) who influence what the gov invests in and a significant number of them come from the DoD side.
It's even a problem among researchers in England: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/david-mccoy/universi...
I agree (though I don't think it's a 'free market' in sense of the economic term of art), however the issue is political power and control. Do we want a few citizens to have that much influence over our society, such as deciding which good works get funded, and who gets the funding? What happens when a donor threatens to reduce funding for the local hospital if the city council passes a law that impacts the donor's business?
Also, I tend to think the NSF will do a better (if not perfect) job of evaluating grant proposals than the random philanthropist.
You are right that the wealthy already have outsized influence; that's not a reason to give them more.