the research is encouraging but I think we've also got pretty good evidence that politics drives the allocation of government resources in general. I'd love to see you take a look at ways to get the politics out of R&D spending allocation decisions and at places where R&D spending has been allocated on politics. One example I can think of off-hand was NASA's really terrible efforts at wind turbine R&D in the 1970s and 1980s where they made consistently dumb choices about which technologies to back and which was motivated by a desire to grab dollars to replace the money lost when space research spending cut back, which is contrasted to NASA's smart R&D spending on photovoltaics to run satellites that helped drive improvements in PV technology which led to improved terrestrial PV.
Government support of R&D in healthcare, and patent protection by government, has resulted in healthcare costs far higher than we can afford. We should reduce the length of time that we give monopoly protection for new healthcare products and services.
James, I agree with you here. The one thing we ought to spend more on is subsidizing ideas!
I want armies of scientists and engineers given the freedom and resources they need to think BIG. We need to build larger particle colliders, more capable space telescopes, advance materials, and energy science science.
We need not directly fund all of this, some money can be set aside as a prize. A prize to clinch fusion, a prize to develop a material for a space elevator, a prize for a room temp superconductor…
the research is encouraging but I think we've also got pretty good evidence that politics drives the allocation of government resources in general. I'd love to see you take a look at ways to get the politics out of R&D spending allocation decisions and at places where R&D spending has been allocated on politics. One example I can think of off-hand was NASA's really terrible efforts at wind turbine R&D in the 1970s and 1980s where they made consistently dumb choices about which technologies to back and which was motivated by a desire to grab dollars to replace the money lost when space research spending cut back, which is contrasted to NASA's smart R&D spending on photovoltaics to run satellites that helped drive improvements in PV technology which led to improved terrestrial PV.
Government support of R&D in healthcare, and patent protection by government, has resulted in healthcare costs far higher than we can afford. We should reduce the length of time that we give monopoly protection for new healthcare products and services.
James, I agree with you here. The one thing we ought to spend more on is subsidizing ideas!
I want armies of scientists and engineers given the freedom and resources they need to think BIG. We need to build larger particle colliders, more capable space telescopes, advance materials, and energy science science.
We need not directly fund all of this, some money can be set aside as a prize. A prize to clinch fusion, a prize to develop a material for a space elevator, a prize for a room temp superconductor…