[_heimdall]

If this ends up being the approach, I really hope it will be led by a country with a few decades experience in successfully being socialist. The US really has no business doing this, the government departments and oversight boards that exist today are much too compromised by the pharmaceutical industry to pull this off.

[bigDinosaur]

A national laboratory is not a socialist idea. If it were then the US would actually be an extremely socialist country given its government spending. Doesn't the US put out the most research in the world, and have the most Nobel prizes? That hardly seems like a country that can't manage this. Nowhere is free of bureaucracy.

[_heimdall]

Nationalization of research laboratories is a very socialist idea. That doesn't make it bad or inefficient, but government takeover of research and education has pretty solid roots in socialism, Marxism, and fascism.

The US does spend the most and that leads to output, but that doesn't mean it's the most efficient or does the best job of prioritizing the populations best interests over political or business concerns.

The selection process of awards like the Nobel Prize is also at risk of bias given that many of the people involved in picking the winners are themselves part of the national laboratory machine.

Regardless, my point was simply that we probably have a better chance at a Swedish effort leading to less biased and more efficient research than one from the US right now. I wasn't aiming for a debate on the relative political roots or leanings of publicly funded research labs.

[knightofmars]

I agree with you here. A parallel example being the IRS and tax reform that's prevented by private companies in the tax preparation domain.

[bigDinosaur]

That's as far from socialism as possible, so I'm really not sure how your example is in agreement.

[bigDinosaur]

A 'national lab' does not have anything to do with 'nationalisation'. Nationalisation means to take over an existing privately run lab, whereas a national lab can be established from scratch without even the hint of a takeover of any private organisation. In the post you replied to there was zero suggestion of nationalisation.

That said, nationalisation is sometimes the correct move as the opposite of privatisation which is also sometimes the correct move, so attaching labels like 'socialist' to it to tar the policy is not productive (just as tarring something as 'capitalist' also does not beget good thinking about policy).