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On 30 Jan 2003 at 11:31, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> I'm not arguing pro strong state. I'm merely saying that the
> tax funded ivory tower R&D is complementary in scope to
> privately funded research. If 95% of it is wasted (and
> lacking libertarian drive in Euland it's bound to stay that
> way for quite a while), it's still nice to see a percent or
> two to go into bluesky research.
You will notice a disproportionate amount of blue sky research
comes from countries that are highly capitalist. Thus
Switzerland is roughly comparable to Sweden in size and wealth,
but we see quite a bit of blue sky research coming out of
Swizterland, not much from Sweden.
Since blue sky research is a public good, only governments can
efficiently produce blue sky research. Does not follow,
however, that governments *will* efficiently produce blue sky
research, and on the available evidence, they do not.
There are several mechanisms that lead companies to produce and
publish interesting data -- one is to make a name for
themselves, as in the human genome project, another his that
they like to employ scientists that have published interesting
research findings, which means that their scientists want to
publish interesting research findings.
--digsig
James A. Donald
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