From: Max More (max@maxmore.com)
Date: Sun Sep 01 2002 - 12:25:05 MDT
At 11:44 PM 8/31/2002 -0700, Reason wrote:
>See article reference at the end of this e-mail:
I think you don't know my background. I was practically weaned on Mises. I
have been intimately familiar with the arguments of that article for over
20 years. I can honesty boast of having read (not skimmed) every page of
Human Action (and Rothbard's Man, Economy, & State). The arguments are all
excellent still. I'm just not taking this as the final word.
It might help if you took my thoughts as a theoretical search for new forms
of effective collective action, not as a current day proposal for a program
within our existing govt. form.
>If it's limited and temporary, it will simply fail.
I'm not certain. I think DARPA does a good job -- probably the best of any
govt. agency. It's funding of research specifically is set up to be
temporary and to prevent the build up of entrenched interests. See, for
example:
DARPA's Disruptive Technologies
Technology Review by David Talbot , published on 10/01/01
http://www.manyworlds.com/logcontent.asp?coid=CO9280114254507
We do not usually associate government agencies with innovation. But DARPA
has always been an exception. This 6-page article both explains how DARPA
runs its research projects and briefly covers some of the remarkable areas
of interest. Unlike the National Science Foundation or the National
Institutes of Health, DARPA funds seemingly far-out research and does it
using unusually interdisciplinary teams. DARPA is not a research facility,
just a funding agency. Its program managers are pulled in from outside and
stay only for three to five years to pursue projects hard or impossible to
do elsewhere. DARPA aims to prime the pump, then let others take over
development once a technology is proven. Major initiatives or "thrusts"
typically last four years and involve five to ten research teams. The
agency stresses teamwork among groups and enforces short-term performance
milestones.
The current areas of focus for DARPA provide clues about which technologies
may be commercially important in a few years. In 2001, DARPA started its
"Bio:Info:Micro" four-year effort. The goal is to link biology and
computing to the sciences of the very small. One part of this program is
attempting to advance direct brain-machine interfaces, drawing in
everything from MEMs implants, brain-data processing, microfluidics, and
mind-controlled exoskeletons. The other part of the project aims to
understand and control the communication network within a cell, leading
towards extremely sensitive sensors for detecting disease or chemicals in
the environment. The agency's "Automa-Teams" project aims to united
researchers in robotics, artificial intelligence, and computer programming
to coordinate and control tens of thousands of robotic devices in a fleet.
>Ok, good. So we're on the same page there. See earlier comment and article
>reference at the end. Why keep going back? Would you invest in a business
>that you had even a fraction of the same concerns with? Of course not. So
>why suggest another beating by the evil dwarf, figuratively speaking?
Before even considering pressing my sketchy proposal in ANY govt. system, I
would FIRST push for the removal of all government interventions that
reduced the effectiveness of labor markets and the transfer of information.
Only after that, if there were still clear structural problems, would I
consider a govt. program of any kind, even in a reformed system.
> It is done better. However, I am not at all sure that it works well for
> everyone. How many of these "competing training institutions that make
> their profit from future wages of the people they retrain" can you point
> to? Perhaps you know of many that I don't.
>Every major technology consulting company. Think about it.
This isn't what I was expecting. I thought you had in mind companies that
specialized in retraining for a cut of future income in a range of fields,
not just technology. I am familiar with technology consulting companies. In
fact I work with one. I do not believe that they take unskilled people and
train them for a share of future earnings. They take people with MBAs or
science degrees or some experience relevant to the job. They don't, as far
as I'm aware, take the proverbial Pittsburgh worker, or N. England factory
or mine worker and train them to work on Oracle software or certify them
for Cisco or Microsoft. The people who can get accepted at such consulting
companies are exactly the kind of people I am *not* concerned with.
>More obviously,
>there are some small schemes involving sending people to university in
>exchange for some percentage of their wages for the first X years after they
>graduate. I don't think any of those really got off the ground.
Why is that? Could it be that the market for this doesn't function well
enough? Of course, pace Mises, that *doesn't* mean the government will do
better. Government failure and all that. But it *does* mean that we can
look for a way to either change the structure of the market so that this
information flows better, enabling such schemes to actually work, or to
look for a minimal but helpful way in which government might fill in the
gaps. Again, for the latter, I would consider it a last resort. If I were
discussing this option with a regular kind of person, I would certainly
spend far more time emphasizing the failures of government. I don't think
you need a whole of convincing on that issue!
>I'm not convinced that there is such a thing as a real need that the market
>does not handle.
Nor am I. Neither am I convinced that there is not.
Anyway, 'nuff said. Since I'm not seriously looking to develop a government
program of this kind, market forces dictate that I put my time into
something more productive than continuing this discussion. :-)
Reason, we really *are* on the same side. I think the only difference is
that I am willing to occasionally peek into the enemy camp to see if they
have any good ideas that could be made to work under different conditions.
Onward!
Max
_______________________________________________________
Max More, Ph.D.
max@maxmore.com or more@extropy.org
http://www.maxmore.com
Strategic Philosopher
President, Extropy Institute. http://www.extropy.org <more@extropy.org>
_______________________________________________________
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