4 ms·

VCs aren't spending my money. Universities are, because they're subsidized by taxes. If they want to make money which says in private hands, they can do it wi

VCs aren't spending my money. Universities are, because they're subsidized by taxes. If they want to make money which says in private hands, they can do it with their own money, not taxpayer funds. Universities were never meant to be profit-generating entities, but institutions of learning. The people in universities should be happy to have a cushy, tenured academic job; people who have a serious "desire to make money" (beyond that of a professor's salary, which is both good and very stable) don't belong at universities at all, they should be working in the private sector.

rayiner 10y ago
> VCs aren't spending my money. Money is money. From the perspective of the incentives of the hypothetical researcher, it's irrelevant where the money comes from. If the government demands 100% equity in return for investment, it just becomes the least competitive VC on the market, doomed to fund the least compelling projects. > The people in universities should be happy to have a cushy, tenured academic job; people who have a serious "desire to make money" (beyond that of a professor's salary, which is both good and very stable) don't belong at universities at all, they should be working in the private sector. Strongly disagree. One of the reasons the U.S. has hands-down the best engineering universities in the world is because of the fluid boundary between academia and the private sector. Filling universities with people who just want a cushy academic job is a great way to make academic research completely irrelevant.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  I disagree on least compelling. Lots of the best stuff coming out of DARPA and NSF research is either not commercialized or could allow for competing implementations while giving innovater first-mover advantage. Smart people interested in impacting the world will do so regardless of whether they can start a business. Many of the great ones actually just continue as researchers since that's their passion.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    First mover advantage has little value in the industries DARPA and NSF find. And both DARPA and NSF (by design) allow companies receiving grants to patent the results of their research. That is not to say that all DARPA and NSF-funded research should be patented. To the extent the research is more fundamental and less applied it shouldn't be. But DARPA and NSF fund both theoretical and applied research and so do universities.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      I know they fund the companies. I was just saying the people getting that funding often work for universities that wouldve built it any way whether a patent or not. Lots of top-tier results come from that. So, I dont think switching to that model exclusively would make less compelling results. It might reduce the number or change university/private ratio of where innovations come from.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > If the government demands 100% equity in return for investment, it just becomes the least competitive VC on the market, doomed to fund the least compelling projects. If the government demands 100% equity then research that can support itself will be funded by the private sector and the government will be left funding research the private sector won't because the benefits are diffuse and the transaction costs of licensing would be prohibitive, and foundational research that won't bear fruit for several years, and high-cost high-risk high-reward research that the private sector won't fund because individual private sector entities don't have the requisite scale to survive the failure of a high-cost high-risk investment. Which is as it should be. Why does the government need to be wasting tax dollars on research the private sector would do on its own? Even for research the private sector might fund anyway, all it means is that the government to be competitive would have to pay the researchers more up front rather than after the fact with a patent, which could still bring about an efficiency improvement by eliminating the patent prosecution and licensing overhead. > One of the reasons the U.S. has hands-down the best engineering universities in the world is because of the fluid boundary between academia and the private sector. There is a difference between not patenting something and preventing the original researchers from benefiting from it. Not having a patent doesn't prevent them from commercializing the research, it just doesn't give them a monopoly -- they still have the knowhow and first to market advantage if they want it. They could even patent the commercialization itself if that wasn't funded by the government, provided it's enough of an improvement over the now-prior-art government-funded research to be awarded a patent. And if it isn't then why should they have one?
harryh 10y ago
Universities (especially top tier ones) aren't just institutions of learning(1) but also knowledge generation organizations. Not allowing the people who actually generate new knowledge to share in the financial benefits would run counter to this goal. 1. I would even go so far as to argue that for top tier institutions that teaching isn't even their primary function.
- zeveb 10y ago
  > Not allowing the people who actually generate new knowledge to share in the financial benefits would run counter to this goal. I think that tenure is itself pretty much the most awesome benefit possible: guaranteed employment for life. Do they really need more?
  - harryh 10y ago
    I highly doubt that the supply curve in this area is completely horizontal. So, at the margin, yes.
- Grishnakh 10y ago
  No problem: then just cut off all public funding for these institutions and make them entirely private (they need to pay back the State for the money they've received though). If you want to privatize profits, you need to privatize the costs too. Don't ask me to fund something and not be able to share in the profits.
  - harryh 10y ago
    You don't have rights to the salaries that public university graduates are able to earn based upon their degrees. Why would you expect to have rights to the profits earned based upon the knowledge generated by these institutions? The plan you describe would lead to far less fruitful basic research and a poorer world as a result.
    - Grishnakh 10y ago
      Holy shit. Maybe because I'm a part-owner in this institutions? Would you think it fair for a private company to take my money as investment money, and give me nothing in return, and keep all the profits for themselves? I've never met anyone who actually believed in "privatize the profits, socialize the losses", but here you are. And your claims about basic research and a poorer world have no evidence whatsoever to back them up. Universities have not always been this way.

rayiner 10y ago

> VCs aren't spending my money. Money is money. From the perspective of the incentives of the hypothetical researcher, it's irrelevant where the money comes from. If the government demands 100% equity in return for investment, it just becomes the least competitive VC on the market, doomed to fund the least compelling projects. > The people in universities should be happy to have a cushy, tenured academic job; people who have a serious "desire to make money" (beyond that of a professor's salary, which is both good and very stable) don't belong at universities at all, they should be working in the private sector. Strongly disagree. One of the reasons the U.S. has hands-down the best engineering universities in the world is because of the fluid boundary between academia and the private sector. Filling universities with people who just want a cushy academic job is a great way to make academic research completely irrelevant.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
I disagree on least compelling. Lots of the best stuff coming out of DARPA and NSF research is either not commercialized or could allow for competing implementations while giving innovater first-mover advantage. Smart people interested in impacting the world will do so regardless of whether they can start a business. Many of the great ones actually just continue as researchers since that's their passion.
- rayiner 10y ago
  First mover advantage has little value in the industries DARPA and NSF find. And both DARPA and NSF (by design) allow companies receiving grants to patent the results of their research. That is not to say that all DARPA and NSF-funded research should be patented. To the extent the research is more fundamental and less applied it shouldn't be. But DARPA and NSF fund both theoretical and applied research and so do universities.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    I know they fund the companies. I was just saying the people getting that funding often work for universities that wouldve built it any way whether a patent or not. Lots of top-tier results come from that. So, I dont think switching to that model exclusively would make less compelling results. It might reduce the number or change university/private ratio of where innovations come from.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> If the government demands 100% equity in return for investment, it just becomes the least competitive VC on the market, doomed to fund the least compelling projects. If the government demands 100% equity then research that can support itself will be funded by the private sector and the government will be left funding research the private sector won't because the benefits are diffuse and the transaction costs of licensing would be prohibitive, and foundational research that won't bear fruit for several years, and high-cost high-risk high-reward research that the private sector won't fund because individual private sector entities don't have the requisite scale to survive the failure of a high-cost high-risk investment. Which is as it should be. Why does the government need to be wasting tax dollars on research the private sector would do on its own? Even for research the private sector might fund anyway, all it means is that the government to be competitive would have to pay the researchers more up front rather than after the fact with a patent, which could still bring about an efficiency improvement by eliminating the patent prosecution and licensing overhead. > One of the reasons the U.S. has hands-down the best engineering universities in the world is because of the fluid boundary between academia and the private sector. There is a difference between not patenting something and preventing the original researchers from benefiting from it. Not having a patent doesn't prevent them from commercializing the research, it just doesn't give them a monopoly -- they still have the knowhow and first to market advantage if they want it. They could even patent the commercialization itself if that wasn't funded by the government, provided it's enough of an improvement over the now-prior-art government-funded research to be awarded a patent. And if it isn't then why should they have one?

harryh 10y ago

Universities (especially top tier ones) aren't just institutions of learning(1) but also knowledge generation organizations. Not allowing the people who actually generate new knowledge to share in the financial benefits would run counter to this goal. 1. I would even go so far as to argue that for top tier institutions that teaching isn't even their primary function.

zeveb 10y ago
> Not allowing the people who actually generate new knowledge to share in the financial benefits would run counter to this goal. I think that tenure is itself pretty much the most awesome benefit possible: guaranteed employment for life. Do they really need more?
- harryh 10y ago
  I highly doubt that the supply curve in this area is completely horizontal. So, at the margin, yes.
Grishnakh 10y ago
No problem: then just cut off all public funding for these institutions and make them entirely private (they need to pay back the State for the money they've received though). If you want to privatize profits, you need to privatize the costs too. Don't ask me to fund something and not be able to share in the profits.
- harryh 10y ago
  You don't have rights to the salaries that public university graduates are able to earn based upon their degrees. Why would you expect to have rights to the profits earned based upon the knowledge generated by these institutions? The plan you describe would lead to far less fruitful basic research and a poorer world as a result.
  - Grishnakh 10y ago
    Holy shit. Maybe because I'm a part-owner in this institutions? Would you think it fair for a private company to take my money as investment money, and give me nothing in return, and keep all the profits for themselves? I've never met anyone who actually believed in "privatize the profits, socialize the losses", but here you are. And your claims about basic research and a poorer world have no evidence whatsoever to back them up. Universities have not always been this way.