Quote:
Originally Posted by leavesofliberty
So ummm, degree from MIT all of a sudden worthless in a capitalist system? And there would be no Linux, or C programming language? Makes no sense to me.
open source exist, because there are people out there that dont believe in capitalism. You think a capitalist is writing down 1 line of code without getting paid for it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Peter
Without the profit seeking, it would never have gotten anywhere near what it is today. Every packet of data, along every step of the way, passing through every machine along the way, is generating profit for a myriad of companies that your hippies have no involvement in.
It's amazing how blind some people are to the reality of the world.
that doesnt change the fact, that "my" hippies began that stuff without hopeing to be the boss of a big company.
If you watch the history of silicon valley, you can clearly see that the invention of the transistor was based on some scientists who wanted to do science in the first place.
In fact, the original team got destroyed soon after getting the Nobel Prize, because the leader tried to manage those scientists like a company and those scientists didnt want to act like they their employee of a friggin company.
A clear example where capitalism did harm to research.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Peter
Scientists get the freedom to play around because companies or individuals pay them to do to just that. Do you want a system where the govt just pays random people to sit around, smoke weed, and think up clever ideas? Don't get me wrong, i'm a fan of smoking weed, but i do mine after hours. lol
what im trying to tell you, is that profit driven companys are unable to do scientific research, unless the result is immidiate profit. Companys should never be allowed to dictate an university what it should do. Unfortunatly, our politicans are just allowing them to do so atm.
Scientific research needs free room, and even if that results in weed in some cases, it might still be worth it.
Example: Medical research which is profit based is much more likely to be fraud, as the researcher might fudge data just to get the pills on the market. And if someone gets hurt, they have enough money to win the trial, so whatever.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Black Peter
The reality is that capitalists DO dictate where the research funds go in the vast majority of cases, including NIH, NSF, etc. You just don't get how the system works. You can't even have a fraction of those grant monies without a successful capitalistic system providing the $$.
No. No. No.
The state should fund researchers and keep the capitalists out. That is how a sane system works.
And the US worked like that befor the 80s fwiw. At the 80s with the decline of the soviets capitalists began a huge march of victory with privatisation and all that mess. The result is the world we live in today and all its problems.
Companys ruin the impartiality of scientific research and replace it with money and power. As long as noone can sue them (and noone can) they are fine.