4 ms·

What['s] to prevent billionaire from spending money on non...errr..profit research... Nothing, of course. But I would rather not rely on the generosity of bil

What['s] to prevent billionaire from spending money on non...errr..profit research... Nothing, of course. But I would rather not rely on the generosity of billionaires to cure the diseases that ravage Africa.

gaius 16y ago
Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Which he will be doing because his notion of "profit" is not measured in dollars but in votes. At least the billionaire's motives are transparent. Here in England we are cutting budgets left, right and centre after the last government nearly bankrupted us. The foreign aid budget is ringfenced. The LibCons have come under a lot of flak for this - but they would have if they'd cut it too - it's simple maths at the end of the day. Remember - the money has to come from somewhere.
- vog 16y ago
  Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Which he will be doing because his notion of "profit" is not measured in dollars but in votes. In other words, the politician invests taxes where "we" want them to. So the proper question is not whether some politician wants to help poor nations, but whether we want to help them. And that's quite a fair question, which is of a much higher quality than the question whether some individual (billionaire) wants to help them. (After all, taxes are our money and politicians are "just" managing it for us.)
  - gaius 16y ago
    Well, no, not really. This is another aspect of the last government's spending patterns: they measured "success" or "progress" in terms of how much they spent, not the end result. Jo(e) Voter can be told spending a billion on aid is good; he perhaps doesn't see that half of that goes to well-paid quango employees back home, and the other half into a dictator's Swiss bank account. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on the other hand, is completely focussed on outcomes.
  - kiba 16y ago
    If it is so important to help poor nations, why don't people just vote with their money instead of having to vote in pandering politicians who will nonetheless squander the money? I mean, at worst, only 51% will get their money spent on things they thought are great noble causes.(Let just assume that every Noble Cause is important) That's not taking into consideration on weather the politicians are managing it wisely.
    - vog 16y ago
      > why don't people just vote with their money It would be really great if that was possible. However, we can't simply buy "$1 worth of helping poor nations" in the way we buy products in the supermarket. And that's why we can't "vote" with our money. (The appearance of micro payments might change that, though.) So we have to trust some organization with the money, and that leads to exactly the same issues of trust. However, the government is under greater pressure and control than most other organizations. Or, at least they should, in a democracy. So trusting them with the money is not worse than trusting any other help organization with the money - except, of course, when you know the people of the help organization personally. But most people don't have such connections.
      - kiba 16y ago
        With private charities, at least I can move my money around or start my own. Beside, democracies suck in actuality. Theory doesn't mean much of anything if they don't work in reality. The Californians vote for programs but not for higher taxes. There are whole lot of lobbying that's going on. Who have time to read thousand pages bills made by congressmen?
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Well, theoretically with a democratic government, the decision to do things for the public good comes ultimately from the "will of the people" rather than the largess of billionaire. Now whether it actually works out that way is another question. Still, American publicly funded research has produced a huge number of public benefits while involving a rather small percentage of public expenditure.
  - Empact 16y ago
    > the decision to do things for the public good comes ultimately from the "will of the people" This is a nice theory, but who is voting on such minor issues, when you have wars, economic turmoil &c.? Absent voter pressure, isn't the reality is that such allocations are determined by lobbying? > a rather small percentage of public expenditure. Doesn't the suggestion of crowd-out point to an unexamined cost, which is the opportunity cost of the researchers? What would they be doing if not directed by government monies? If their efforts are being applied sub-optimally, what cost does that represent?
    - joe_the_user 16y ago
      Yes, If it weren't for government funding, brilliant mathematicians might be making the bucks on Wall Street. It's Wall Street's loss and "society's" gain. That illustrates to me that, contrary to the article, not all goods are private goods. -- and it's not nice to quote people without including their caveats.
      - ccamrobertson 16y ago
        Of course, if government had not intervened during the S&L crisis, the precedent of "too big to fail" may never have been set - ignoring for a moment the full ramifications of financial collapse. The financial sector no longer operates under standard free market rules given TBTF and thus the outsize profits that continue to attract highly educated graduates to Wall Street are secured by fear of total financial collapse. Under the same rules that all other businesses play by, collapse would wipe out the bad players and free up tremendous resources for new enterprises to start - something that did not occur in the case of Wall Street. Thus, aspects of Wall Street shape it to appear as another form of government funding/regulation that crowds out real free market enterprises from hiring those brilliant mathematicians.
kiba 16y ago
Do you make yourself to send money to cure diseases that ravage Africa? If it is so moral, than it's worth doing by itself, right?
- AlisdairO 16y ago
  Absolutely. If I'm honest, though, despite my ideals being that I want a significant proportion of my money to go to charity, actually forcing myself to part with it directly is a real challenge (particularly thanks to the procrastination that I, like so many people, exhibit in such situations). Personally, I find the level of abstraction provided by the government to be helpful: I'm much more able to say that I want the government to spend money in certain areas, even if it means raising my taxes, than I am able to just hand money to a cause. I'm a much more rational spender of money I've already given to the government than I am of my own. I think the same holds for most people, to be honest.
  - kiba 16y ago
    I'm a much more rational spender of money I've already given to the government than I am of my own. I think the same holds for most people, to be honest. Frankly, I find charity to be much more meaningful when I give it out of my free will, rather than making the government do it for me. Rather, government spending defeat the point of charity.
    - AlisdairO 16y ago
      I don't agree that the point of charity is the warm fuzzies that I get when I give - it's a means to an end (improving the lot of others) which is more effectively accomplished,in my and many others' case, through the government handling it.
      - kiba 16y ago
        I don't agree that the point of charity is the warm fuzzies that I get when I give - it's a means to an end (improving the lot of others) For me, the merits of charity is also about their voluntary nature in addition to the "warm fuzziness feeling". On the other hand, I suspect that our disagreement is in respect to both utilitarian merits and moral/ethical philosophy.

gaius 16y ago

Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Which he will be doing because his notion of "profit" is not measured in dollars but in votes. At least the billionaire's motives are transparent. Here in England we are cutting budgets left, right and centre after the last government nearly bankrupted us. The foreign aid budget is ringfenced. The LibCons have come under a lot of flak for this - but they would have if they'd cut it too - it's simple maths at the end of the day. Remember - the money has to come from somewhere.

vog 16y ago
Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Which he will be doing because his notion of "profit" is not measured in dollars but in votes. In other words, the politician invests taxes where "we" want them to. So the proper question is not whether some politician wants to help poor nations, but whether we want to help them. And that's quite a fair question, which is of a much higher quality than the question whether some individual (billionaire) wants to help them. (After all, taxes are our money and politicians are "just" managing it for us.)
- gaius 16y ago
  Well, no, not really. This is another aspect of the last government's spending patterns: they measured "success" or "progress" in terms of how much they spent, not the end result. Jo(e) Voter can be told spending a billion on aid is good; he perhaps doesn't see that half of that goes to well-paid quango employees back home, and the other half into a dictator's Swiss bank account. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on the other hand, is completely focussed on outcomes.
- kiba 16y ago
  If it is so important to help poor nations, why don't people just vote with their money instead of having to vote in pandering politicians who will nonetheless squander the money? I mean, at worst, only 51% will get their money spent on things they thought are great noble causes.(Let just assume that every Noble Cause is important) That's not taking into consideration on weather the politicians are managing it wisely.
  - vog 16y ago
    > why don't people just vote with their money It would be really great if that was possible. However, we can't simply buy "$1 worth of helping poor nations" in the way we buy products in the supermarket. And that's why we can't "vote" with our money. (The appearance of micro payments might change that, though.) So we have to trust some organization with the money, and that leads to exactly the same issues of trust. However, the government is under greater pressure and control than most other organizations. Or, at least they should, in a democracy. So trusting them with the money is not worse than trusting any other help organization with the money - except, of course, when you know the people of the help organization personally. But most people don't have such connections.
    - kiba 16y ago
      With private charities, at least I can move my money around or start my own. Beside, democracies suck in actuality. Theory doesn't mean much of anything if they don't work in reality. The Californians vote for programs but not for higher taxes. There are whole lot of lobbying that's going on. Who have time to read thousand pages bills made by congressmen?
joe_the_user 16y ago
Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Well, theoretically with a democratic government, the decision to do things for the public good comes ultimately from the "will of the people" rather than the largess of billionaire. Now whether it actually works out that way is another question. Still, American publicly funded research has produced a huge number of public benefits while involving a rather small percentage of public expenditure.
- Empact 16y ago
  > the decision to do things for the public good comes ultimately from the "will of the people" This is a nice theory, but who is voting on such minor issues, when you have wars, economic turmoil &c.? Absent voter pressure, isn't the reality is that such allocations are determined by lobbying? > a rather small percentage of public expenditure. Doesn't the suggestion of crowd-out point to an unexamined cost, which is the opportunity cost of the researchers? What would they be doing if not directed by government monies? If their efforts are being applied sub-optimally, what cost does that represent?
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    Yes, If it weren't for government funding, brilliant mathematicians might be making the bucks on Wall Street. It's Wall Street's loss and "society's" gain. That illustrates to me that, contrary to the article, not all goods are private goods. -- and it's not nice to quote people without including their caveats.
    - ccamrobertson 16y ago
      Of course, if government had not intervened during the S&L crisis, the precedent of "too big to fail" may never have been set - ignoring for a moment the full ramifications of financial collapse. The financial sector no longer operates under standard free market rules given TBTF and thus the outsize profits that continue to attract highly educated graduates to Wall Street are secured by fear of total financial collapse. Under the same rules that all other businesses play by, collapse would wipe out the bad players and free up tremendous resources for new enterprises to start - something that did not occur in the case of Wall Street. Thus, aspects of Wall Street shape it to appear as another form of government funding/regulation that crowds out real free market enterprises from hiring those brilliant mathematicians.

kiba 16y ago

Do you make yourself to send money to cure diseases that ravage Africa? If it is so moral, than it's worth doing by itself, right?

AlisdairO 16y ago
Absolutely. If I'm honest, though, despite my ideals being that I want a significant proportion of my money to go to charity, actually forcing myself to part with it directly is a real challenge (particularly thanks to the procrastination that I, like so many people, exhibit in such situations). Personally, I find the level of abstraction provided by the government to be helpful: I'm much more able to say that I want the government to spend money in certain areas, even if it means raising my taxes, than I am able to just hand money to a cause. I'm a much more rational spender of money I've already given to the government than I am of my own. I think the same holds for most people, to be honest.
- kiba 16y ago
  I'm a much more rational spender of money I've already given to the government than I am of my own. I think the same holds for most people, to be honest. Frankly, I find charity to be much more meaningful when I give it out of my free will, rather than making the government do it for me. Rather, government spending defeat the point of charity.
  - AlisdairO 16y ago
    I don't agree that the point of charity is the warm fuzzies that I get when I give - it's a means to an end (improving the lot of others) which is more effectively accomplished,in my and many others' case, through the government handling it.
    - kiba 16y ago
      I don't agree that the point of charity is the warm fuzzies that I get when I give - it's a means to an end (improving the lot of others) For me, the merits of charity is also about their voluntary nature in addition to the "warm fuzziness feeling". On the other hand, I suspect that our disagreement is in respect to both utilitarian merits and moral/ethical philosophy.