Friday, July 29, 2005
Instapundit endorses scientific socialism.
"While human embryonic stem cell research is still at a very early stage, the limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases," Mr. Frist says, according to a text of the speech provided by his office Thursday evening. "Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified."
I'm with Frist.
The US is a mixed economy. It is both the world's largest socialist economy, and the largest market economy. That's not "free market", but is a market. About half of scientific research is funded by the federal government, although the data is inexact, and we could quibble with what counts as scientific research or not. The result is a weird symbiosis. While on the one hand crushingly high taxation (about 40%, where we know from the laffer curve that anything over about 28% is counterproductive and reduces overall revenue)keeps the economy crippled and a shadow of what it could be, much of what the market economy is doing, science-wise, is commercializing ideas developed in government funded labs. While a dollar spent by government is only about half as efficient as a dollar in the market, both approaches do contribute to the advancement in science. In the short term, it would be disruptive to end all government spending on science, or sharply limit it to what's useful to promote government functions. Russia, certainly, hasn't recovered from the downsizing of government there, and is still a mess. But in the longer term, our best hope is to starve the beast, limit the federal government to caretaker status,
so that the market economy can flourish, and bring the singularity in our lifetimes.
Instapundit seems to want both a hugely instrusive government that does hard science stuff, and to enjoy civil liberties. That's an old liberal mistake. You can have one or the other. End of rant.
My cold isn't getting better, and I feel pretty woozy, and have stuff I need to go do today, sigh.
"While human embryonic stem cell research is still at a very early stage, the limitations put in place in 2001 will, over time, slow our ability to bring potential new treatments for certain diseases," Mr. Frist says, according to a text of the speech provided by his office Thursday evening. "Therefore, I believe the president's policy should be modified."
I'm with Frist.
The US is a mixed economy. It is both the world's largest socialist economy, and the largest market economy. That's not "free market", but is a market. About half of scientific research is funded by the federal government, although the data is inexact, and we could quibble with what counts as scientific research or not. The result is a weird symbiosis. While on the one hand crushingly high taxation (about 40%, where we know from the laffer curve that anything over about 28% is counterproductive and reduces overall revenue)keeps the economy crippled and a shadow of what it could be, much of what the market economy is doing, science-wise, is commercializing ideas developed in government funded labs. While a dollar spent by government is only about half as efficient as a dollar in the market, both approaches do contribute to the advancement in science. In the short term, it would be disruptive to end all government spending on science, or sharply limit it to what's useful to promote government functions. Russia, certainly, hasn't recovered from the downsizing of government there, and is still a mess. But in the longer term, our best hope is to starve the beast, limit the federal government to caretaker status,
so that the market economy can flourish, and bring the singularity in our lifetimes.
Instapundit seems to want both a hugely instrusive government that does hard science stuff, and to enjoy civil liberties. That's an old liberal mistake. You can have one or the other. End of rant.
My cold isn't getting better, and I feel pretty woozy, and have stuff I need to go do today, sigh.
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