[quote=pri_dk][quote=CA renter]I could literally go on for years about the role of public funding and public institutions in science, but know that I’d be wasting my time with you. You need to do more research before you spout off…your ignorance is frightening.[/quote]
Wow. I don’t know what to say. You have proven me completely wrong. I completely lost this debate.
You are correct. Europe is socialist. Capitalism never created anything. Your post above proves it. Your handful of cut and paste references to a few European scientists – many who did their work before socialism even existed – is irrefutable proof of your claim that socialist Europe is the driver of all innovation. I have no counter for your logic.
Your brilliance is staggering.
Nevermind that the US government didn’t even start funding scientific research until the mid 20th century.
Nevermind that you conviniently left out all the names of the private companines that were involved in your LCD example:
Nevermind the facts. The government invented everything! Your list, full of selective omissions, proves it!
BTW, if you really cared about the Piggs, you would tell all the engineers here to stop going to work every day. Poor flu spends his days at Broadcomm thinking he’s innovating when you have proven that it is impossible. If he really wants to create any value for society, he needs to go work for the government!
But wait…you still can’t name a single socialist country in Europe!
And until you do. I win.
(does a little victory dance…)[/quote]
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1. Where does it say that 2/3 of university research is funded by corporations and only 10% funded by govt? I’ve read through your link a few times, and couldn’t find anything to back up your point. Please “cut and paste” the entire paragraph where it says that.
Looks like you’re still battling problems with reading comprehension.
2. Where did I ever say that “capitalism never created [anything]” or that “the government invented everything”? I never said either of those things. Once again, you’re either intentionally twisting my words, or your total lack of reading comprehension skills rears its ugly head again. If you can find where I’ve ever said that, I’ll pay you $1,000.
3. I’ve already addressed Japan’s economy earlier in the thread — yes, the government was/is very heavily involved. Please refer to previous post regarding this topic.
4. Already named a socialist country earlier in the thread. I’ve also addressed how the real definition of socialism differs from your definition that’s based on the propaganda preached in U.S. schools. Again, see above.
5. The history of publicly funded scientific research in the U.S. (shall we go into the history of publicly-funded research/universities in Europe — which is responsible for so many of the discoveries and innovations made throughout history?):
“A Brief History of Federal Involvement in University-Based Research
The development of federal involvement in university-based R&D is intertwined with the broader issue of federal involvement in science and technology (S&T) in the United States. Federal involvement in scientific or technical matters was explicitly provided for in the U.S. Constitution only in the provisions for a system of patents and for a census to be held every ten years. For decades in the early history of the country, the doctrine of states’ rights (preventing a concentration of authority in the federal government) together with a strain of populist antielitism and a faith in the indigenous development of pragmatic technologies kept the nation from realizing either Thomas Jefferson’s vision of strong federal support for science, largely through agriculture, or Alexander Hamilton’s advocacy of government subsidies for the advancement of technologies to the benefit of industry. From time to time, the U.S. Congress would deviate from this stance and invest in limited operations in support of exploratory or commercial interests, such as the Lewis and Clark expedition or the establishment of the Coast Survey, both in the early 1800s.
In the 1840s, two events–the establishment of the Smithsonian Institution under federal auspices and the creation of the American Association for the Advancement of Science–highlighted the growing visibility of S&T and foreshadowed the later development of a more significant federal involvement in science and technology. These events, together with what William G. Wells Jr. called a “tide of technological developments … in industry, in agriculture, in communications, and in transportation” (p.8) in the 1850s, set the stage for a qualitative change in the federal role in these areas; this change came in the 1860s as a result of several events. First, the Civil War provided the first of several recurring examples of war focusing the government’s attention and resources not just on technology but on the science underlying the technology. Second, the creation of the National Academy of Sciences in 1862 put the elite of American scientists, most of them in universities, at the service of governmental needs. Third, the passage of the Morrill Act and the creation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, both of which occurred in 1862, established the land-grant college system, heavily focused on agriculture and the mechanical arts, and developed government bureaus related to agricultural research, in a symbiotic relationship that, by the end of the nineteenth century, approached the Jeffersonian vision of a century earlier.
Meanwhile, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the forerunner of the National Institutes of Health was established and undertook programs of research aimed at public-health problems, although much of this work took place in government rather than in university laboratories. Additional initiatives putting governmental resources in the service of S&T-based activities in the areas of conservation, industry, and (to a limited extent) aviation took place in the first two decades of the twentieth century. These did not yet involve significant amounts of university-based R&D, but their importance was that, with the curious exception of military applications, the essential infrastructure of federal government involvement in S&T was firmly in place by the 1920s, and, according to A. Hunter Dupree, “a government without science was already unthinkable” (p. 288). Belief in the importance of research had become infused throughout much of the U.S. economy, and industrially based R&D was becoming established in certain industries.”
