# Libertarian Mythology **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 26, 2011, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327 "2011-05-26T18:18:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/101 "2011-05-31T22:13:14Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > So, if this is a flaw of libertarianism, what is the solution? > > What it sounds like you’re proposing is to increase the top marginal tax rate so that the government can give that money to people working on what can best be described as “curiosity.” No purpose, no direction, simply curiosity. > > Can I have one of those grants? I’ve got all kinds of curiosity and they all require a larger, flatter, higher definition tv. Sure. Write up a grant proposal and see if it flies. I certainly am not making the argument that government funded research is useless or frivolous, nor am I saying that much of government funded basic research doesn’t lead to knowledge that is useful at some point in the future. I’m just saying that it isn’t necessary. Fundamental research isn’t going to stop just because the funding source switches to individuals. > [@](#): > > But really, this entire line of argument can be dismissed not by mocking the funding source, but by pointing to the Federal Ban on Stem Cell Funding. Not really. There are few areas where funding is not allowed, and just because you found isn’t an indictment of the entire process. ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/102 "2011-05-31T22:19:54Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Number 1, that’s a bad analogy, because environmental regulations are needed in an industrial society for the health, safety, and often the very lives of the citizens. Not so with funding of “basic research”. I didn’t say research was equally as necessary as environmental protection, I said it was analogous in how it can be done much more effectively and efficiently by a central authority than by competing private entities. > [@](#): > > Number 2, there are lots of things that governments can do more effectively than private institutions, but we don’t let the government do those things in order to preserve the liberty of the people. So I don’t take “more effective” a justification for government action. Arguments like these are why libertarians have a hard time being taken seriously. Some libertarians don’t want to pay taxes to support a military or environmental protection. You are perfectly happy to encroach upon their liberties for things you view as necessary to the safety and security of society. So too are most of us willing to encroach further on your liberty to ensure our future prosperity and advancement. Seriously, the fact that you’d rather not pay taxes to support something is not an encroachment on your liberty. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/103 "2011-05-31T22:44:37Z")
> [@Giraffe](#): > > I didn’t say research was equally as necessary as environmental protection, I said it was analogous in how it can be done much more effectively and efficiently by a central authority than by competing private entities. Possibly. But that assumes it should be done by the government in the first place. > [@](#): > > Arguments like these are why libertarians have a hard time being taken seriously. Some libertarians don’t want to pay taxes to support a military or environmental protection. You are perfectly happy to encroach upon their liberties for things you view as necessary to the safety and security of society. No political party can reach agreement among its members on what should be funded and what should not. That is not unique to Libertarians. > [@](#): > > So too are most of us willing to encroach further on your liberty to ensure our future prosperity and advancement. Fine. If you want to argue that less research will get done in a Libertarian society, then you could be right. But, as I noted earlier, there is no way to objectively determine the proper amount of research that should be done. And we don’t have any way of knowing what things don’t get done because resources are diverted into areas that they wouldn’t voluntarily be used for in the absence of government funding of that research. I will also note that pretty much everyone in the world gets to benefit from research funded by the US government, so maybe if we didn’t do it, someone else would, and we’d still be able to benefit from it. Unless you are gong to argue that the US is the one and only country in the world capable of funding significant scientific research. Now, given that this thread is about “myths” about Libertarians, what “myth” are proposing to lay out for us? I certainly wouldn’t claim that a Libertarian America would have put a man on the moon in 1969, but it wouldn’t have gotten us entangled in Vietnam or Iraq, either. > [@](#): > > Seriously, the fact that you’d rather not pay taxes to support something is not an encroachment on your liberty. I think the burden is on you to convince me it is not if you want to tax me for that “something”. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [May 31, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/104 "2011-05-31T23:08:01Z")
> [@Rand\_Rover](#): > > RE: computers, it sounds like you are saying that the military created demand for a product, which spurred the creation of a whole industry. Besides the IC, there’s another technology that was practically created by the Government: the thing we now call the internet. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/105 "2011-06-01T06:55:09Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > The ultimate Libertarians, of course, are Anarchists, as in, no authority over the individual Um, no, that’s not right. Libertarians \*aren’t \*Anarchists and Anarchists don’t all espouse authority-less anarchy. They espouse Anarchism, which is not necessarily the same thing. You can’t tell me an Anarcho-Syndicalist is the ultimate Libertarian with a straight face. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/106 "2011-06-01T07:09:15Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Um, no, that’s not right. Libertarians \*aren’t \*Anarchists and Anarchists don’t all espouse authority-less anarchy. They espouse Anarchism, which is not necessarily the same thing. > > You can’t tell me an Anarcho-Syndicalist is the ultimate Libertarian with a straight face. Check out Libertarian ideology on the Internets, for your own education. Some Libertarians in the US want to pass as hard core Republicans, which is too pathetic to even talk about. If I do, I’ll be banned again 🙂 Libertarianism acknowledges the right of an individual to assign a monetary worth to another human being, without the right of a supervisory authority, like a Government, to have a say how an individual deals with his/her subordinates. Meaning, your company should be free to produce a pharmaceutical pill that may kill people, and if enough people die then they will stop buying it, so consumption, or otherwise known as the free market, will regulate the viability of your company, not any overseeing authority, like a Governmental authority like FDA. Read up on Libertarianism. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/107 "2011-06-01T11:59:38Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > Check out Libertarian ideology on the Internets, for your own education. I know enough about Libertarians to know they are not any kind of Anarchist (of which, I am one) - unless you consider the Redwashing term “Anarcho-capitalist” to be anything other than an oxymoron. Libertarians are commited to Capitalism, no true Anarchist can be. And yes, I know it looks like I just made a “No True Scotsman”, but that’s not the case. Capitalism cannot exist without state support. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/108 "2011-06-01T12:35:55Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > Check out Libertarian ideology on the Internets, for your own education. Or, you know, you could check out the libertarian ideology on display in _this very thread_ or on this board in general, which has a fairly large collection of libertarians. > [@](#): > > Some Libertarians in the US want to pass as hard core Republicans, which is too pathetic to even talk about. If I do, I’ll be banned again 🙂 Does anyone else know what this is supposed to mean? > [@](#): > > Libertarianism acknowledges the right of an individual to assign a monetary worth to another human being, without the right of a supervisory authority, like a Government, to have a say how an individual deals with his/her subordinates. Libertarians do not believe in ‘assigning monetary worth to human beings’. They believe in being allowed to offer monetary exchange to other human beings, with the understanding that human beings also have the right to decline. They also believe that monetary worth of _activities_ is determined by the market. You may think that your awesome skills are worth a zillion dollars, but ultimately what they are worth is what _other_ people are willing to pay you to exercise them. Allowing this process to happen is the best way to make sure that people learn the skills that bring maximum benefit to society. If demand builds for a particular set of skills, then those possessing them will be able to bid up their services, and the high price offered for those skill gives incentives to other people to learn them. The alternative to this is to use government to force people to pay you what you think you are ‘worth’, or to subsidize certain activities and punish others, despite what the market is demanding. The result is lower economic growth and ultimately lower living standards for all. > [@](#): > > Meaning, your company should be free to produce a pharmaceutical pill that may kill people, and if enough people die then they will stop buying it, so consumption, or otherwise known as the free market, will regulate the viability of your company, not any overseeing authority, like a Governmental authority like FDA. Not if that company violates accepted standards of risk, or hides defects in its pills, or suppresses studies showing risk. But yes, ultimately if a company says, “We’ve developed a vaccine that we think will help prevent HIV from turning into AIDS, but we haven’t done ten years of trials yet, and here are the possible things that we think could go wrong based on all the evidence we have so far, so use at your own risk.” Then yes, people should be allowed to buy that medicine - just as they are free to buy motorcycles despite the fact that they are more dangerous than cars, or as they are free to climb mountains, despite the risk they willingly take on. And companies are free to sell mountain-climbing equipment, despite the face that the activity it’s used for increases risk to the user. Of course, the part you leave out is that the market has its own regulating mechanisms. For example, your health insurer may have a vested interest in the efficacy of the drugs you buy, so it may get together with other insurers and create independent testing labs. It may then make this information available to doctors and patients, and if your doctor goes against their recommendations he may be sued and your insurance might be invalidated. This type of private regulation happens all the times. Underwriters Laboratories is exactly the kind of insurance-backed testing organization I’m talking about. We also get all kinds of quality signals through the free market. For example, the value of a company brand is a signal to the market. BMW has a reputation for fine cars that drive well. If they produce a car that drives like garbage, it hurts their brand and costs them real money. Therefore, they have an internal incentive to live up to their own brand reputation. In turn, reliance on a brand is a shortcut to being able to discover quality of complex devices without having to be an engineer. > [@](#): > > Read up on Libertarianism. Yes, you really should. I would recommend starting with “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman - a fantastic defense of markets and freedom, written in an accessible style by one of the greatest economists of the 20th century. Even better, the book was made into an excellent TV series on PBS, and the entire thing is [available in free streaming video](http://miltonfriedman.blogspot.com/) on the internet. Just follow the link. This presentation is awesome in that after each episode, Friedman faces a grilling by top economists and political leaders challenging his views, and he has to defend them. It’s really a fantastic way to understand the issues around libertarianism. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/109 "2011-06-01T13:31:31Z")
> [@Naxos](#): > > Check out Libertarian ideology on the Internets, for your own education. > > Some Libertarians in the US want to pass as hard core Republicans, which is too pathetic to even talk about. If I do, I’ll be banned again 🙂 Two pathetic excuses to avoid backing up his unsupported claims. This ain’t IMHO, bub. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/110 "2011-06-01T14:00:01Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > You can tell them by them being able to generate the oodles of cash needed to fund this type of research. Apple is the most profitable company on the planet right now. Does it have a monopoly? > [@](#): > > You deny that IBM was effectively a monopoly in the mainframe days? That Microsoft was in the height of Windows? The Nobel Prizes IBM researchers got and Gordon Bell running around recording his entire life are indicators enough. Circular reasoning: “Only monopolies can engage in basic research. How do you tell if a company is a monopoly? If it engages in basic research.” IBM certainly had a near-monopoly in mainframes. It got that monopoly by betting the entire company on one of the greatest engineering projects of its era - the IBM 360. But it did _not_ have a monopoly in computing power, and in fact what happened to IBM is that it focused all its energy on dominating the mainframe market, while in the meantime minicomputers like the DEC PDP-8 and VAX, Data General Nova, and the HP1000 computers came along and started eating the mainframe market share. And as I said before, by 1986 IBM was in real trouble - it was losing market share in the PC world rapidly, and the mainframe market was shrinking. As for Microsoft, many people have tried to claim that it had a coercive monopoly, but there’s really not much evidence for it. It may have had a near-monopoly in desktop operating systems through sheer size and the fact that operating systems by their nature benefit from having as much market share as possible. However, that simply stimulated other ways of using computers, such as cloud-based computing, browser-based applications, mobile computing, etc. > [@](#): > > I started at Bell Labs during the Bell System days, doing 3 - 5 year out research, and I can assure you that our monopoly paid for this. Hell, it paid my salary, because the oddities of regulation meant that every dollar they paid me returned more than a dollar in profit, even if I never did anything useful. When the monopoly went away, researchers were suddenly told to go find something useful to do. Not just in Bell Labs, I know someone from IBM research who said that his “research” had to be directly tied to a product need. I wouldn’t deny that Bell Labs benefited from the government-enforced monopoly of Bell. Of course, that monopoly sucked for consumers, and when the government ended that monopoly competition exploded, driving down communications prices. But that ‘recording your entire life’ project? Still going on at Microsoft. Microsoft has been losing market share for years, and its stock price has been stagnant, but it still spends $10 billion per year on R&D. And quite a bit of that R&D is indeed basic research. > [@](#): > > That you use the term “R&D” demonstrates that you don’t understand this issue very well. The D stands for Development, which is most of any R&D budget, and which is something government should neither fund not get involved with. Companies do the D part just fine. I think I understand it just fine - given that I have worked in basic research in the past, and that right now I have to sign my timesheets and categorize my activites as R&D or construction for tax purposes. The fact is, the line between ‘basic research’ and ‘development’ is not always easy to find. For tax purposes, if the work is done in the process of creating a specific product for sale, it’s not R&D. If the activities being done are feasibility studies or basic design, it may or may not be R&D, but that doesn’t mean it’s basic research. Basic research is generally meant to include activities that are not done with any particular commercial goal in mind. For example, if I’m doing research to determine which type of metal alloy I should use in my product, that may be R&D, but it’s not basic research. On the other hand, if I’m studying the molecular structure of metals in an attempt to maybe someday come up with better alloys, that’s basic research. > [@](#): > > Microsoft is quickly becoming a former monopoly. When they suffer profit issues, guess what will get cut first? Oh, they’ll call it Microsoft Research, for the PR benefit, but the people there will be told to start doing something to make money. No doubt. I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. > [@](#): > > Does doing efficacy studies and improving the manufacturability of a drug count as real research in your book? My wife worked on Tagamet - the difference between the fundamental R part (done at a university) and the D part was very obvious. No, I wouldn’t consider efficacy studies to be basic research. But for that drug to reach the stage where it is being tested for efficacy, it had to be developed in the first place. Depending on the type of drug, that development may have required very basic research indeed. The vast number of Ph.D. biochemists are employed in industry, and Ph.D. biochemists are not conducting efficacy studies - they’re sitting in laboratories doing basic research. > [@](#): > > Drug companies don’t do too much fundamental research, and we shouldn’t expect them to. Yeah, actually they do. Biotech is probably the industry where the greatest percentage of basic research is done by industry as opposed to the government. Now, sometimes this research is done in conjunction with academic institutions or government agencies, or in joint government/academic/industry projects, but a hell of a lot of it is done in private research labs. > [@](#): > > Understanding how to map the genome was the R. Understanding DNA was the R. The very brilliant work at finding ways to do it faster was D. Actually, it was both. A lot of basic research went into the development of the systems Celera used to sequence the genome. For one trivial example, they had to figure out how to use eletrophoresis to extract the DNA, and they had to figure out how to build systems that could automate that process and get the data into their computers in the first place. A lot of quite basic research was being done in that process - as well as the research required to come up with the process in the first place, which allowed the genome to be sequenced at 1/10 the cost of the government progream. The only ‘D’ part was the actual process of doing the sequencing once the process had been figured out. > [@](#): > > None of which is expected to make a profit. Nowhere did I say that only government could fund R. You need leftover money with no expectation of a return on your investment. Do you think that this private funding would be adequate to fully fund research, under any model of full funding you agree to? And I didn’t say that private research == research done with profit money. There are many sources of basic research in the private market. I listed many of them. My personal opinion is that there is still a role for some government funding of basic research, but that’s a deviation from ‘pure’ libertarianism. I would restrict such research to those types of research that cost far more money than private industry an be expected to raise, and for which no market exists. The examples I gave were the Large Hadron Collider and the Cassini probe. I personally would consider that type of research to be on the same level as maintenance of law courts - something that only government can do, but which is recognized as being necessarily to the long-term health of society. > [@](#): > > Nanotech companies have business plans, right? They have specific niches where they think they can make money. Very advanced D, but D nonetheless (and they might well be wrong - not all D pans out.) Why do you care? So long as it’s true basic research that’s expanding our understanding of the universe and the things in it, I don’t care if the people doing it ultimately want to make a profit - just as I don’t care if a scientist in a government lab is really motivated by salary or the desire to get a prize and impress chicks. I just care if the work is getting done. > [@](#): > > As for Intel, I know plenty of people at Intel Research, and they are doing the kind of research needed for next generation processes, which is nothing to sneeze at. They are a monopoly also, but may be losing it. Did you know that if Intel vanished today, AMD does not have enough fab capacity to replace it? They’re losing their monopoly? Without the government stopping them? Looks like the market works. What’s your point about Intel’s fab capability? I truly don’t get it. As for the research they do - they’re not just researching what they need for the next generation of processors - they’re doing research at a more fundamental level to ensure they have a foundation of basic science that will carry them many generations into the future. Intel has been doing work in optical computing and basic research in lasers for at least a decade, despite there being no roadmap to an optical computing product ( I think there may be one now with ‘Lightpeak’, but Intel researchers have already gone way beyond that). > [@](#): > > Intel illustrates my point quite well. They are awesome in manufacturing. However, their tightly focused research missed the non-PC market. They did nothing in the embedded space, which is why ARM is eating their lunch there. I don’t understand the point you’re making. Intel didn’t anticipate the mobile computing market, and that means they don’t do basic research? Or what? And it’s it great that when a company like Intel misses the mobile computing market, some other company can step up and help build that industry? The free market in action. It’s a great thing. Good thing we don’t have government technologists planning the direction of computing - because if _they_ missed the market like Intel did, we’d just be screwed. > [@](#): > > There is also SRC, which funds university semiconductor research from a consortium of industrial companies. I was a rep to one project from both Bell Labs and Intel. There was an ongoing discussion about how researchy the projects should be, and about technology transfer. Yes, every company or consortium gets to decide where their research money should go. That’'s a wonderful thing. > [@](#): > > I’ve also funded university research from with companies, and been on committees deciding on funding. Most industry people want to play it safe. I convinced the Intel committee I was on to go with the riskiest (but potentially most rewarding) of several proposals, since most people were very successful developers. Good on you. So you’re an example of someone in the private industry helping to drive basic research. You’re part of the solution, not part of the problem. Kudos. But you kind of prove the point that this work gets done in private industry. > [@](#): > > And I can go on for pages about technology transfer. Ever done this? It is harder than the research. Nope. But I did do some basic research in an earlier life. I even spent some time on a program to study the way dolphins communicate - funded by a _shopping mall_. They had a dolphin exhibit, but they wanted to make sure that it got good PR and wasn’t seen as a way to just exploit the dolphins, so they poached some animal behaviorists from an aquarium and hired me as a technologist and we did honest-to-god animal research. Another funding source for our dolphin research was the computing company Sperry. Why would Sperry fund dolphin research? Well, they provided some of the computing hardware we needed, and their end goal was to work it into an ad campaign - something like, “Our computers are so easy to use, even this guy can use them” [cue dolphin clicking into a microphone to make the computer respond]. You never know where the funding will come from. And by the way, they spent a lot of money to make the dolphin tank several times bigger than the recommended minimum set out by the Cetacean institute and to provide private space for the dolphins to get away from the public: partly to avoid controversy, but also in part because one of the owners of the mall loved dolphins - which is probably why they were there in the first place. > [@](#): > > $776 million? NIH invests over $31 billion in medical research.[Cite](http://www.nih.gov/about/budget.htm). There are a limited number of crazy billionaires out there. Not that limited. As I said, this is just one institute, and its budget is about 2.5% of the NIH’s. There are many such institutes, and those institutes make up just part of the entire R&D budget. Of course, if we decide to tax people so heavily that it’s very hard to become a billionaire, then we’ll lose some of that funding. > [@](#): > > As for the 31%, how much of that is real R? I had the pleasure of helping to fill out my conmpanies R&D tax credit form one year, and while most of what we did qualified, little or none of it was real R in my book. I think there’s a lot of truth in that. But on the other hand, a lot of government ‘research’ spending also doesn’t go into basic research, but goes to fund a growing bureaucracy. And government research is also directed into pet projects of legislators or manipulated by bureaucrats just as it is in private industry. In addition, there is a tremendous amount of waste in government research in my experience. Dead-end projects that linger because a dept. head is better at knowing what to kiss, and when. Research facilities that aren’t producing, but which can’t be killed because they’re in a powerful district. Research being done on fads that happen to be in the news and therefore get the money. If we’re going to compare government and industry, let’s not compare real-world industry with all its faults against an idealized view of government that doesn’t exist. > [@](#): > > BTW, D people are just as smart as R people, but we have a different mindset. I’m much more R than most developers, but much more D than most researchers, and I’d go nuts without some practical application. I’ve gotten to tell Arno Penzias about how our work was research, and factory managers how exactly the same work was practical development. I’ve been in this space for over 30 years, I know it quite well. It sounds like you and I would get along well. I’m of the same mindset. I’ve always managed to steer my work in development into a more research-oriented direction, and I constantly pressure my company to invest more in fundamental research rather than to be constantly focused on the next product cycle. Yet at the same time, my engineering experience tells me that the best work gets done when there are clear goals and constraints on a project. Balancing the two is the real trick, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/111 "2011-06-01T14:39:29Z")
As soon as libertarians begin to justify the state erecting coercive entities in the pursuit of the general welfare they never seem to recognize they’re doing that dreaded social engineering thing they accuse others of while simultaneously giving the state all the power it needs to undue any bargains won. There’s also the niggling detail that concentrated private power expects to get its bread buttered. Kinda the entire point of the whole towering edifice that is a nation state. If we ever have a revolution settling for libertarianism would be…underwhelming. Might as well ride that unicorn all the way to the moon. Also, like [IOZ](http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2009/10/renouncing-libertarianism-is-cuter-than.html) says: > [@](#): > > It is a lame, purely American third-party movement that sometimes appropriates the trappings of ideology in order to justify self-perpetuation in the face of a plurality-takes-all electoral system wholly inimical to minor parties. In reality, it is no more an ideology, let alone a philosophy, than is “Democrat” or “Republican.” It is moderately more consistent than either major American political party because it has no constituency. In the absence of a coalition, coherence. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/112 "2011-06-01T15:16:43Z")
So, who’s the true Scotsman, here? Over in the Pit, gotta couple fellows who claim the Libertarian banner as their own, and whose agenda is at considerable variance to the more or less Libertarian Lite agenda proposed by our own **Sam**. Perhaps someone with the appropriate Libertarian credentials could set the record straight? Or at least provide us with some basis for deterimining what those appropriate credentials might be? I know, for instance, that there is a Libertarian Party, and have even been offered candidates. Are you aligned with that agenda, **Sam** , or are you a representative of another faction of Libertarianism? And these fellows holding forth in the Pit, are they the “real thing”, or you? ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/113 "2011-06-01T15:19:49Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I think the burden is on you to convince me it is not if you want to tax me for that “something”. No, it really isn’t. I’m perfectly happy with the status quo. Given that we’ve been the single richest nation in the world for the past fifty years that we’ve also been the undisputed leaders in scientific research, I think the burden is on those who would throw away all that we’ve built because they feel ideologically uncomfortable with their tax rate. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/114 "2011-06-01T18:28:08Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > I don’t understand the difference between likely to succeed and will be effective at getting a result. You said it was easy to know how much federal funding was the right amount by measuring it against “high quality” proposals. But we don’t know in advance how many dead ends have to be explored before we hit pay dirt. Dead ends are successes also. What is not a success is a paper that says that the experiment was not adequate to tell if the hypothesis was falsified or supported. Look at stem cells. We’ve got research in embryonic cells, and we have research on skin cells. The only reasonable way to proceed is to work on both, a breadth first approach, and not try to guess which approach is best when doing funding. > [@](#): > > I’m well aware of the differences. Basic research is just that-- basic. It is not necessarily product driven but just seeks to understand the fundamentals. It’s a wonderful thing, and I’ve done some myself when I was in graduate school. But I can’t justify taking money for Joe Average in order fund my own curiosity about the universe. But someone’s curiosity on how the universe works is where the fundamental breakthroughs come from. Governments can do stuff with longer horizons for ROI than most companies can these days. Joe Average may not see the return, but his kids might, and should be happy to pay the tiny bit to help his kids continue to live in the leading country. (Cue patriotic music.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2011, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/115 "2011-06-01T20:27:34Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Apple is the most profitable company on the planet right now. Does it have a monopoly? Not legally. But Jobs’ genius is to have build a closed system which he has marketed so brilliantly that people line up to buy the latest overpriced product. So, he has the margins of a monopoly without being one. Genius, like I said. But, if Apple does basic research, I’ve never seen it. Friends who have been hired by Apple kind of disappear. They show up to conferences, but never talk about what they are doing, and they never, ever write papers about it. I’m not saying that all monopolies do basic research - just that almost all real basic research in industry is done either by monopolies or former monopolies who haven’t given up the ghost yet. Though there are exceptions done by researchers hired for prestige or for PR, but not that many. > [@](#): > > IBM certainly had a near-monopoly in mainframes. It got that monopoly by betting the entire company on one of the greatest engineering projects of its era - the IBM 360. But it did _not_ have a monopoly in computing power, and in fact what happened to IBM is that it focused all its energy on dominating the mainframe market, while in the meantime minicomputers like the DEC PDP-8 and VAX, Data General Nova, and the HP1000 computers came along and started eating the mainframe market share. And as I said before, by 1986 IBM was in real trouble - it was losing market share in the PC world rapidly, and the mainframe market was shrinking. Yeah, PCs, not minis, killed the monopoly. Minis were mostly used for other types of applications, but PCs were perfect for the kind of business applications that mainframes were good for. > [@](#): > > As for Microsoft, many people have tried to claim that it had a coercive monopoly, but there’s really not much evidence for it. It may have had a near-monopoly in desktop operating systems through sheer size and the fact that operating systems by their nature benefit from having as much market share as possible. However, that simply stimulated other ways of using computers, such as cloud-based computing, browser-based applications, mobile computing, etc. You should read some of the books on the antitrust trial. There were hidden APIs, there were attempts to break the software of competitors, and of course there were the deals with PC makers. I don’t think the weakness of Windows inspired mobile computing - it was component costs cheap enough to allow a decent OS to run on a phone. We can debate whether MS just bobbled the Windows mobile OS, or if Windows is inherently too bloated to be effective on a phone. Moving to a browser based world was obvious, and the root cause of them trying to have IE monopolize the browser space - they just didn’t do a good job with it. > [@](#): > > I wouldn’t deny that Bell Labs benefited from the government-enforced monopoly of Bell. Of course, that monopoly sucked for consumers, and when the government ended that monopoly competition exploded, driving down communications prices. I won’t disagree with this. I can tell you stories I heard from people who used to work in the business equipment groups. > [@](#): > > But that ‘recording your entire life’ project? Still going on at Microsoft. Microsoft has been losing market share for years, and its stock price has been stagnant, but it still spends $10 billion per year on R&D. And quite a bit of that R&D is indeed basic research. Nobody is going to fire Gordon Bell without a lot of really bad press. The decline will come, but it comes slowly as the project mix changes to more immediate projects. I saw Penzias do this, and it takes a long time to complete - and there will still be people doing basic stuff, and still PR people trumpeting it. > [@](#): > > I think I understand it just fine - given that I have worked in basic research in the past, and that right now I have to sign my timesheets and categorize my activites as R&D or construction for tax purposes. The fact is, the line between ‘basic research’ and ‘development’ is not always easy to find. For tax purposes, if the work is done in the process of creating a specific product for sale, it’s not R&D. If the activities being done are feasibility studies or basic design, it may or may not be R&D, but that doesn’t mean it’s basic research. Basic research is generally meant to include activities that are not done with any particular commercial goal in mind. Then you can’t claim that corporate R&D spending says anything about the health of basic research. We had three categories of work - development, usually with results in a year or so, advanced development or applied research, 1 - 3 years out, and basic research, 3 - 5 years out. They weren’t that hard to distinguish. > [@](#): > > No, I wouldn’t consider efficacy studies to be basic research. But for that drug to reach the stage where it is being tested for efficacy, it had to be developed in the first place. Depending on the type of drug, that development may have required very basic research indeed. The vast number of Ph.D. biochemists are employed in industry, and Ph.D. biochemists are not conducting efficacy studies - they’re sitting in laboratories doing basic research. I lived near a lot of pharma companies in NJ, and knew a bunch of Ph.Ds - and none of them were doing basic research. I’m sure there was plenty going on, but a Ph.D is just as useful for advanced development. > [@](#): > > Yeah, actually they do. Biotech is probably the industry where the greatest percentage of basic research is done by industry as opposed to the government. Now, sometimes this research is done in conjunction with academic institutions or government agencies, or in joint government/academic/industry projects, but a hell of a lot of it is done in private research labs. Got a cite? Just out of curiosity. Lots of VCs see biotech as the next big thing, and are willing to fund some more fundamental work to get in on the ground floor. Some of my professor friends in EE say that most of their new students want to work in bioengineering, not the traditional fields. > [@](#): > > My personal opinion is that there is still a role for some government funding of basic research, but that’s a deviation from ‘pure’ libertarianism. I would restrict such research to those types of research that cost far more money than private industry an be expected to raise, and for which no market exists. The examples I gave were the Large Hadron Collider and the Cassini probe. I personally would consider that type of research to be on the same level as maintenance of law courts - something that only government can do, but which is recognized as being necessarily to the long-term health of society. These are massive projects which no company will fund. Is that why they should be government funded, or should it be because of the nature of the research? Funding a professor and one or two students is just as important. Private funds are great, but you have to have a donor who likes that area. The question is, will private funding be adequate in amount and coverage? Unlikely. From running conferences, I’ve seen massive influxes of papers in areas which suddenly become hot. There will be a massive influx of grant proposals in this area also. It would be nice if we could minimize fad funding, though we’ll never eliminate it. I’ve seen plenty of papers and proposals that was the same old stuff from the researcher with a new introduction stating how this was vital for new fad area X. > [@](#): > > Why do you care? So long as it’s true basic research that’s expanding our understanding of the universe and the things in it, I don’t care if the people doing it ultimately want to make a profit - just as I don’t care if a scientist in a government lab is really motivated by salary or the desire to get a prize and impress chicks. I just care if the work is getting done. When a researcher at one of these companies is deciding what to do next, is he going to work on something which might be valuable in 5 years or something, equally as interesting, which might be valuable in one year? If I had stock I’d know what my answer would be. If this guy were working in Area 11 in the good old days, his answer would be very different. > [@](#): > > They’re losing their monopoly? Without the government stopping them? Looks like the market works. > > What’s your point about Intel’s fab capability? I truly don’t get it. They are losing their monopoly due to underlying changes in the market, not due to competition. Intel kept AMD out of Dell through money, but Dell knew that if Intel decided not to sell to them AMD did not have the capacity to take up the slack. > [@](#): > > As for the research they do - they’re not just researching what they need for the next generation of processors - they’re doing research at a more fundamental level to ensure they have a foundation of basic science that will carry them many generations into the future. Intel has been doing work in optical computing and basic research in lasers for at least a decade, despite there being no roadmap to an optical computing product ( I think there may be one now with ‘Lightpeak’, but Intel researchers have already gone way beyond that). The next generation processor, from the market point of view, has taped out already. The generation beyond that is in the RTL state, and the generation beyond that is in the instruction set level simulation stage. The generation beyond that depends on a few process nodes in the future. Really, really difficult stuff - sure. Lots of hard problems, sure. Fundamental research? No way is the process roadmap going to depend on that. Optical computing is another story. I know people who worked on optical computing and optical switching 25 years ago. Very risky, and a game changer, and a very good example of basic research. And I doubt Intel has a roadmap for productizing this stuff. > [@](#): > > I don’t understand the point you’re making. Intel didn’t anticipate the mobile computing market, and that means they don’t do basic research? Or what? And it’s it great that when a company like Intel misses the mobile computing market, some other company can step up and help build that industry? The free market in action. It’s a great thing. Good thing we don’t have government technologists planning the direction of computing - because if _they_ missed the market like Intel did, we’d just be screwed. Intel, being a for-profit company, did research in areas where they anticipated needing great advances. They had no incentive to fund things that they weren’t anticipating. They pushed heavily on areas which would need a lot more home computing power, like games and when I was there video-conferencing. The more high end processors, the more money. They missed the market for lower computing power applications. And I never, ever have said that government should set research directions. Terrible mistake. The trouble is, funding really big projects which chew up money that could have gone to smaller ones is effectively setting research directions. Look at manned spaceflight. The most hopeful sign is the move of private industry into this area. The Shuttle was a development project, not a basic research one. > [@](#): > > Yes, every company or consortium gets to decide where their research money should go. That’'s a wonderful thing. You didn’t get my point. The discussion was not who should get the funding, it is what type of projects were appropriate. One professor had developed a nice set of EDA tools with the funding. He was asking for money to maintain them for the subset of member companies who were using them. Many people thought it would be a mistake to do this, and that he should either form a start-up to sell them or work with the EDA vendors who were part of SRC to productize them. > [@](#): > > Not that limited. As I said, this is just one institute, and its budget is about 2.5% of the NIH’s. There are many such institutes, and those institutes make up just part of the entire R&D budget. > > Of course, if we decide to tax people so heavily that it’s very hard to become a billionaire, then we’ll lose some of that funding. I don’t know about the bio stuff, but friends used to work for Hughes Research in Malibu, and they got government funding. I’m glad no one has suggested a tax rate so high as to eliminate billionaires. Restoring it to Clinton levels certainly won’t prevent lots of people from becoming billionaires, like they did in the '90s. > [@](#): > > I think there’s a lot of truth in that. But on the other hand, a lot of government ‘research’ spending also doesn’t go into basic research, but goes to fund a growing bureaucracy. And government research is also directed into pet projects of legislators or manipulated by bureaucrats just as it is in private industry. In addition, there is a tremendous amount of waste in government research in my experience. Dead-end projects that linger because a dept. head is better at knowing what to kiss, and when. Research facilities that aren’t producing, but which can’t be killed because they’re in a powerful district. Research being done on fads that happen to be in the news and therefore get the money. > > If we’re going to compare government and industry, let’s not compare real-world industry with all its faults against an idealized view of government that doesn’t exist. I spent a lot of time on a process to make sure that internal non-government funded R&D was evaluated properly. It is very hard for some managers to tell their funders that the project did not work. Our greatest success was letting the researchers on the project do a review that actually convinced management that it should be terminated. There are as many egos there as there are in government. I haven’t noticed a lot of inefficiency in NSF oversight of projects. Given the amount of money they hand out, their building is not that big. I think big projects are more likely to see political pressure than small ones, and I already mentioned my dislike of the politically motivated small business initiative. And I agree on fads. I never noticed any pressure on any grants I’ve reviewed, and no professor I’ve spoken to seems to have felt a benefit or disadvantage based on the location of the university. There is a lot of state-level politics, however, but more on funding of the student part and less on research. > [@](#): > > It sounds like you and I would get along well. I’m of the same mindset. I’ve always managed to steer my work in development into a more research-oriented direction, and I constantly pressure my company to invest more in fundamental research rather than to be constantly focused on the next product cycle. Yet at the same time, my engineering experience tells me that the best work gets done when there are clear goals and constraints on a project. Balancing the two is the real trick, isn’t it? Indeed. But even in development, having the time to see what is going on out there leads to new and better solutions to the problems you have now. The bottom line is - private funding of R & D is great, but what is the best level of research funding to keep us competitive, and will private sources be adequate to provide it, absent the big projects. Also, will there be jobs for new Ph.Ds that let them utilize their talents during their most creative periods. I just hired two, who will be starting in the next two months, and I hope I can do some new stuff as well as the immediately needed development work I have. ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/116 "2011-06-07T19:19:50Z")
I don’t think it’s a stretch to look at China as a combination of libertarian survival of the fittest combined with a vestige totalitarian government framework. China has a wild wild west capitalism that routinely breeds stuff like the tainted baby formula and any number of cost saving shortcuts regardless of any kind of safety combined with only a pitiful amount of government oversight. I certainly don’t have any confidence that the almighty quest for dollars will be regulated by a libertarian marketplace based on real life experience. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/117 "2011-06-07T20:03:04Z")
> [@China\_Guy](#): > > I don’t think it’s a stretch to look at China as a combination of libertarian survival of the fittest combined with a vestige totalitarian government framework. China has a wild wild west capitalism that routinely breeds stuff like the tainted baby formula and any number of cost saving shortcuts regardless of any kind of safety combined with only a pitiful amount of government oversight. > > I certainly don’t have any confidence that the almighty quest for dollars will be regulated by a libertarian marketplace based on real life experience. In China, people who get caught tainting baby formula (or perhaps do something that might decrease exports) get executed, right? Some libertarians seem to have the theory that people would not run a business doing something harmful because of the penalties for getting caught. China seems to falsify that contention. In the US, they get a slap on the wrist and a fine if we’re lucky, and they go to jail very, very rarely. ---
**Author:** ![emacknight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ec8ea/32.png) [@emacknight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/emacknight)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/118 "2011-06-07T21:05:47Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > In China, people who get caught tainting baby formula (or perhaps do something that might decrease exports) get executed, right? Some libertarians seem to have the theory that people would not run a business doing something harmful because of the penalties for getting caught. China seems to falsify that contention. In the US, they get a slap on the wrist and a fine if we’re lucky, and they go to jail very, very rarely. But as far as I can tell it’s not because China lacks regulations. As you pointed out those that get caught violating those regulations get executed. The problem is that the regulators are as corrupt, if not more so, than the corporations. Wouldn’t a better system simply be to assume all the crap made in China contains poison until proven otherwise? ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/119 "2011-06-07T21:24:59Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > Wouldn’t a better system simply be to assume all the crap made in China contains poison until proven otherwise? Yup, I suggest a private vetting agency verifying the safety of the food. After all, private ratings agencies are never corrupt. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2011, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327/120 "2011-06-07T21:36:28Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > But as far as I can tell it’s not because China lacks regulations. As you pointed out those that get caught violating those regulations get executed. The problem is that the regulators are as corrupt, if not more so, than the corporations. > > Wouldn’t a better system simply be to assume all the crap made in China contains poison until proven otherwise? We have the system where we assume all crap made in the US contains poison until proven otherwise. Then we make the crap-makers prove it. Which they complain about because the it costs money to prove it, and crap-makers in China don’t have to prove it. They just sacrifice somebody once in a while over there. So instead of making crap here, the crap-makers just buy crap from China and resell it here. Then they don’t have to prove it doesn’t contain poison, because the Chinese regulators took care of that. Here we buy crap from China which we should assume contains poison. There they buy crap from China which they should assume contains poison. Here our regulators are corrupt. There their regulators are corrupt. So basically we should just execute somebody once in a while instead of putting minimal effort into regulation and collecting fines? Nothing else would change. How is this an improvement? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/libertarian-mythology/583327.md?page=7)