From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun Apr 07 2002 - 01:44:46 MST
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
>>For a Libertarian, the current Welfare State is a crime and would turn a
>>
>
> I assume you are speaking for yourself, yes? Libertarian != Extropian.
> I for one would argue fairly strongly that any system that taxes the
> general population and puts a reasonable fraction of that income into
> peer reviewed scientific research is going to advance an extropic agenda
> faster than a "pure" libertarian society where the only scientific
> research that gets funded is by those who understand science sufficiently
> to want to donate their resources to it. [That would be another "useful"
> figure for extropic discussions -- which country spends the greatest
> fraction of GDP on scientific research?]
>
Well, the obligatory counter to your argument is one of the
excluded middle. Clearly government science and science funded
by the rich for their own amusmement are not the only ways that
scientific research occurs. Quite a few investors and companies
notice that scientific breakthroughs tend to lead (although
somewhat unpredicatably) to huge payoffs. At the least
companies notice that they lose when a competitor funds a
breakthrough.
Now, I don't belive that this third alternative is optimal
necessarily but it does have the large advantage of being
compatible with freedom.
- samantha
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