Ludwig

"I’m striving for a balance between humanity and the environment and resource base."

What has that got to do with government funding of science? Government doesn’t presumptively stand for balance, or humanity, or the environment, or the resource base. It claims a legal monopoly of the use of aggressive force, that is all. It has no more competence, wisdom or selflessness than the rest of the population, in fact less.

All the money to fund science comes from society. Government doesn't supply any funding that is not already available.

No-one arguing for government of science has justified their assumptions
1. that people wouldn't still fund science in the absence of government funding
2. that science wouldn’t produce as good results, or better, without government funding
3. if people were free to choose and chose not to fund science as much, that the alternative uses to which they put their money would be less beneficial for society.

So we get this assumption that, in science, government presumptively puts money to its more important uses than its own owners would. But we get this assumption *everywhere* government intervenes: roads, and health, and education, and you name it.

There’s only one problem. It’s a completely false and irrational belief. If it were true, total government control would produce a more productive economy, a better environment, and less divisiveness.

The opposite is true.

A government power to stand for "the environment" is totally false. Government does not presumptively stand for better environmental management. It's own stewardship is the classic locus of the tragedy of the commons.

A power over “the environment” must be a total power. It is not possible to limit it in theory, let alone in practice. It must spell the end of the possibility of constitutional government, which we are indeed seeing now, with government intruding into every possible corner of our lives without limit on pretext of saving "the environment".

Talk of striking a balance assumes that you have made a sensible distinction between humanity and the environment in the first place. You haven’t.

“The environment” is not a value in its own right, over and above human interests. You don’t speak for super-human values, you speak for *your* values.

Environmental problems are not a conflict between humans and “the environment”, but between humans with different interests. Environmental problems stem almost entirely from the tragedy of the commons, i.e. the inability of government to manage the environmental resources that it claims it is so indispensable at managing.

Your argument assumes that government is some kind of magic lamp that we can rub to get economic and environmental benefits otherwise unavailable. You assume
a) that government has nothing to do with causing the environmental issues in the first place, and
b) that environmental problems will get better the more we hold things in common.

These assumptions are completely false, irrational, and unscientific.

> You seem to want science to just forever increase productivity, without any ‘greenie’ encumbrances.

Not at all. I have no particular agenda for science, other than it should be voluntarily funded. I think if it was, we would get much more satisfactory results, in everyone’s terms, except for the current priviligentsia. Much would go to increasing productivity, and since productivity means the same output for lesser inputs, or more output for the same, that’s *better* for the environment. Much would go to medicine and areas of pure interest such as astronomy. Much would go to natural history, biology, ecology, and 'green' purposes like energy efficiency.

> Well, don’t you think science IS delivering what you want?

The very fact of unnecessary conflict over what should be funded proves that government funding of science produces bads not goods.

You just want to force others to fund your own pet favourite purposes, so you have no right to complain when others want to do the same for themselves.

You don't even approve of the major uses of government-funded science. So perhaps you should re-think your support of the orthodoxy?

"The nationalization of intellectual life, which must be attempted under Socialism, must make all intellectual progress impossible."
Ludwig von Mises

There is considerable economics literature on the high economic returns from basic research, although there are considerable difficulties in measurement. See for example

http://www.vwl.uni-mannheim.de/stahl/!/van/fss07/Literature/05_Universities/SM_ecobpf.pdf

on medical research:

http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/kevin.murphy/research/murphy&topel.pdf

The problem is that returns are fluctuating, intermittent, and involve considerable luck, so funding basic research requires patience, deep pockets, and an acceptance that there will be a lot of false leads.

http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/arxpapers/cond-mat_2f9809366.htm

Private research is very valuable, especially on the development end, but there are big problems in relying on it for all basic research. One problem is a short-term focus and often a lack of means to engage in risky research. Businesses have obligations to their shareholders.

Another issue is the free-rider problem. People who haven't paid often can't be excluded from the benefits of research. Our family was recently able to save money based on (public) research that involved proper trials on herbal remedies to distinguish the ones that are effective from the ones that aren't. How would Peter Hume stop this information from getting out to the people who haven't paid?

A third issue is lack of effective demand, where the people who stand to benefit or benefit most from the research cannot afford to pay for it. The Gardasil vaccine, developed in Australia, that will protect against most cervical cancer and some other rare cancers in both men and women could save millions of lives in the Third World where there is no access to Pap smears.

With private philanthropy, there are issues about whether there will be enough of it directed in the best ways to be socially optimal. Greater wealth does not necessarily imply superior wisdom about everything.

Thanks for your carefully considered response Peter.

I wrote;

< I’m striving for a balance between humanity and the environment and resource base. >

You asked;

<< What has that got to do with government funding of science? >>

I find it incredible that you would ask such a question! Don’t we want science to contribute first and foremost to a healthy vibrant future? Isn’t a sense of balance in relation to population, resource use and environment all-important in this regard? Therefore, isn’t it an essential bottom line that a significant part of our scientific fraternity be working on this, especially given our massively unbalanced continuous growth paradigm?

Crikey, do you we really want science to only or predominantly be geared towards increased productivity and improved per-capita efficiencies? This in isolation would just feed antisustainability!

We DESPERATELY need a major effort on the other side of the equation. That is; how to limit the demand and pressure on resources and environment, instead of having our scientific fraternity almost entirely geared towards how we provide resources for an ever-growing mass of humanity! (Of course, there is also a lot of science that is more marginal to our economic/social wellbeing and geared predominantly to improving our understanding of nature, but with positive spinoffs for our future wellbeing, such as my field of ecological and taxonomic botany)

<< Government doesn’t presumptively stand for balance, or humanity, or the environment … >>

No, of course it doesn’t……unfortunately. Government really is failing here in one of its most fundamental duties; to look after the best interests and wellbeing of the constituency. This fundamental short-coming is exactly why we desperately need a strong scientific fraternity, which is free of government or business bias.

<< I have no particular agenda for science, other than it should be voluntarily funded. >>

I’m staggered Peter! How can you have no desired agenda? If you have no agenda, then why is it important to you as to what it does or how it is funded?

<< Talk of striking a balance assumes that you have made a sensible distinction between….

….humanity and the environment in the first place. >>

Not at all. The desire for balance is simply the desire for us humans to stop continuously increasing pressure on our environment, resource base and future wellbeing, which I think most people can see as a major concern.

As to the details of the best balance and how best to achieve it, well that is exactly what a large part of our scientific fraternity should be working on!

<< Your argument assumes that government is some kind of magic lamp that we can rub to get economic and environmental benefits >>

!!??!! Where did you get this assertion from?? It is just the opposite to how I see it, which is exactly why we need science, as well as academia, to be much freer in their expression and choice of fields of study.

If governments can commission studies like the national population carrying capacity inquiry, as former Prime Minister Keating did in 1994 or Premier Bligh’s population growth summit in Queensland in 2010, then they might just be able to break the stranglehold of big-business / economic-rationalist pressure for never-ending rapid growth and start to steer us towards a paradigm of sustainability.

Government at all levels in Australia is far too close to the big business sector and far too removed from the general community’s long-term wellbeing. Now, while a lot of people in government don’t mind that at all, there is an increasing number of people (incumbents, opposition, minor party and independent members) who can see that this is very bad news for out future.

But getting out of the vested-interest growth-forever trap is very hard to do. One way of assisting it is to fund unbiased environment/social/ecomomic science (sustainability science), that can provide oomph for the development of a political sustainability paradigm. We ABSOLUTELY need this, as some political / post-political identities such as Bob Carr, Kelvin Thomson, and even Bob Hawke, keep expressing.

Yes, you could call this my << pet favourite purpose >> for science. But hey, is it not really the most important thing of all?

Ludwig
Obviously what concerns you is that government funding of science is being used to fund research, and to further purposes that you don’t agree with. That is an argument *against* government funding of science, not in favour of it.

“One way of assisting it is to fund unbiased environment/social/ecomomic science (sustainability science),”

The end for which science is used can never be “unbiased”, and certainly not just because it's premised on your opinion!

You would like funds to go into research intended to reduce consumption and conserve resources; and you consider this the most important thing.

But other people don’t agree with you and they think other values are the most important. So since you agree that government should fund science, and since the rationale behind democratic government is to represent the majority, even if it means forcing the minority to pay for what they disagree with, your opinion only goes to produce results that you yourself are opposed to.

How do you know, if government funding of science were abolished, that more people wouldn’t voluntarily fund conservation than economic growth?

Divergence
The articles you cite do not prove net benefits for society as a whole considering all the downside, and in any event that perspective is flawed, for why should one person, perhaps poorer, be forced to pay for a benefit for someone else, perhaps richer?

Private businesses are constrained precisely by the fact that consumers won’t voluntary pay for things that they don’t want. So it is no argument to say that private businesses won’t fund “basic research” because it only disproves the *assumption* that it's worth funding in the first place.

“Greater wealth does not necessarily imply superior wisdom about everything.”

Neither does greater power, so you haven’t go to square one in establishing a justification for state funding of science.

The fallacies of the free-rider problem are refuted in detail in this interesting article https://mises.org/journals/jls/7_1/7_1_1.pdf ; but in any event the free-rider problem is greater, not less with government funding , as you yourself have just demonstrated.