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Someone paying you to do research and then you not giving them the results of that research is theft. Doing it to millions of taxpayers who weren't asked whethe
by Causality1 5y ago
Someone paying you to do research and then you not giving them the results of that research is theft. Doing it to millions of taxpayers who weren't asked whether they wanted to fund you makes it exponentially worse, not better. Publicly-funded research not entering the public domain is damn near treasonous.
- cycomanic 5y agoExaggerating a little? There is lots of government subsidies for all sort of company business activities (in many countries companies can get tax credits etc for doing R&D for example). Research funding is one of the smallest fish in this pond.
- m-ee 5y agoIt was money explicitly given to the company for the purpose of building a business. But if you wanna view me as a thief for getting my salary from it go ahead, with all the pork barrel spending, tax cuts, iffy DOD contracts out there the SBIR program seems like an odd target of disdain.
- musicale 5y ago> Someone paying you to do research and then you not giving them the results of that research is theft Presumably we wish to incentivize invention. But the idea that the taxpayers should own a significant share of what they pay for has merit. Public domain is interesting because it arguably benefits the rest of the world more than the originating country.
- cwkoss 5y ago> Public domain is interesting because it arguably benefits the rest of the world more than the originating country. I could understand benefits equally, but how does it benefit other countries more than originating country?
- Karrot_Kream 5y agoNet benefit, not gross. Other countries can have the innovation with none of the investment. I can easily think up a scheme where countries pump their brightest to go to a country with good infrastructure and lax public domain rules and reap the benefits.
- ninjanomnom 5y agoThere are more people in countries that aren't the originating country. Anything which benefits everyone equally will benefit that group more, it's not about an individual other country benefiting more. It's technically true but I find it to be another unfortunate example of "us" vs "them"
- 8note 5y agoBy funding the invention, the origin country also gets the inventors, who are likely more valuable than the invention itself. Having the capability to invent seems way more powerful than having access to inventions
- tester34 5y agoonly for some peroid of time, later you lose that advantage, I guess
- int_19h 5y agoThe rest of the world using the invention does not diminish its utility to the country that invented it.
- Ma8ee 5y agoIt diminishes how much money the country that invented it can make.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- int_19h 5y agoI think the problem is that we're thinking about everything in terms of money. The primary purpose of publicly subsidized innovations should be to make life easier and better, not to earn money for the government. We have taxes for the latter.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]