[fn-mote]

Yesterday I was reading comments about how the market could pay for research and avoid the “distorting effects” of public funding.

Is there any way to get a better outcome for the public here, or is “do good stuff then sell out” the way it’s always going to be?

[edwardbernays]

What distorting effects of public funding? What about the distortionary effects of the market? I'll offer the suggestion that what you read is brainrotting private market propaganda designed to erode the public institutions that make America happier, healthier, and wealthier.

[tomrod]

In economics discussions regarding public funding policy, the concern of "crowding out" commercial firms or nonprofits is a real concern. It's definitely an observed, measured, and reported phenomenon.

In the end, incentives matter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowding_out_(economics)

[edwardbernays]

There is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public, so in this sense there is no crowding out. Providing research to the public enables the discovery of new products which would otherwise have not been created. Public research is a public good that makes our nation happier, healthier, and wealthier.

[tomrod]

Let's ignore FOSS contributions for a moment, which very much contradict your claim that private companies don't contribute research to the public.

Outside software technology: there is a series of papers from Grossman (going back to the 80s!) that analyzes basic versus applied research in a macroeconomic framework. Basic research _can_ be a public good, applied research can be crowded out. Combined with microeconomic research that monopolies can be dynamically efficient (investing in applied and basic R&D, like Bell Labs) and you get several examples and theories that contradict your statement that "there is no private market entity with an incentive to provide research to the public."

Another real world example in hardware that contradicts this claim is the evolution of building control systems. Before the advent of IOT, so, circa 1980s - 2010s, you saw increasing sharing and harmonization of competing electronics standards because it turned out to be more efficient to be modular, not have to re-hire subcontractors at exorbitant rates to maintain or replace components that go haywire, etc.

[edwardbernays]

Including FOSS software is so wild in this conversation that it's ridiculous. You mean creating a product as a loss leader to get people into an ecosystem, farm social capital, create a sales funnel, or get free labor from the community to provide QA? The creation and release of software is NOWHERE NEAR the same category as "doing actual real scientific research" that it just smells of incredibly bad faith argumentation.

Economic analysis? Another intelligence product that requires essentially no staff, no actual R&D, no equipment besides computers? Brother, you have to be kidding me.

The hardware thing is just companies evolving to a shared standard.

Do you have even a little bit of a clue how hard it is to do good pharmacological research? Toxicological? Biological? Chemical? Physical? You have mentioned intelligence products with 0 investment cost and 0 risk of failure.

This is perhaps one of the most fart-sniffing tech-centric perspectives I have ever been exposed to. Go read some actual research by actual scientists and come back when you can tell me why, for instance, Eli Lilley would ever make their data or internal R&D public.

Jonas Salk did it. He is an extremely rare exception, and his incentive was public health. Notice that his incentive was markedly not financial.

Market entities with a financial incentive, whose entire business model and success is predicated on their unique R&D results, have 0 incentive to release research to the public.

[tomrod]

I apologize that my points in my prior comment were so easy to misunderstand. Your response here shows a dramatic superficiality in understanding each of these areas I brought up, when not missed entirely. My hope is you can move past your rhetorical stumbling blocks in the conversation -- if that proves impossible, I'm happy to leave things as this being my last comment in our shared thread.

(1) FOSS is not only the next hyped front-end framework or modern data stack funnel. I encourage you to do more research for what European universities and organizations are doing. Not everyone follows the American or Chinese extractive approaches to software.

Further, while many corporations do indeed farm social capital and perform other appreciably maladative and cynic-inducing behaviors, the universe and the space of organizations is large. There are a great many examples of governments adopting public research and development released by private entities -- in FOSS and in other contexts.

Additionally, the fact that FOSS-product-focused companies tend to launch _after_ FOSS becomes successful to support the FOSS offering with associated services is quite a bit different from what is perhaps a FAANG-induced cynicism. To reiterate - the universe and the space of organizations is large.

(2) You interpreted that I did pointed to economic analysis as public vs. private R&D. This is a misinterpretation on your part and I encourage a re-read. I pointed to findings and studies to help you understand where the organizational and market frameworks for analysis stand.

(3) I am a researcher and regularly publish my findings, under the banner of the university I support, under non-profits I support, and under the company I run. I appreciate your experience has made you cynical. Lets break down this section.

> This is perhaps one of the most fart-sniffing tech-centric perspectives I have ever been exposed to.

This was not received as a good-faith statement, and further discussion on it will only engender argument. I suggest we move beyond trivial digs.

> Eli Lilley would ever make their data or internal R&D public.

Not to shill for them, but your point on Eli Lilly is incorrect. Eli Lilly has worked towards more transparent release of information -- they voluntarily launched an online clinical trial registry starting in 2002 (for Phase II–IV trials initiated on/after October 15, 2002) and extended full trial registration (including Phase I) from October 1, 2010.[0] Since 2014, Lilly has published clinical study results (Phase 2/3) regardless of outcome, adhering to PhRMA/EFPIA transparency principles. Patient-level data on marketed-approved indications is available to qualified researchers via a controlled-access third-party portal.[1] Beginning in 2021, Lilly has also produced plain‑language summaries of Phase 2–4 results in English, and more recently extended plain‑language summaries to Phase 1 trials in the EU in compliance with new regulations.[1]

Especially the third point is relevant -- good government regulation leads to better sharing and transparency. Smart companies take regulation as an innovation opportunity.

> Jonas Salk did it. He is an extremely rare exception, and his incentive was public health. Notice that his incentive was markedly not financial.

Aye, and I wish that all medical and life-enhancing research could be accomplished as relatively cheaply or as magnanimously as Jonas Salk.

> Market entities with a financial incentive, whose entire business model and success is predicated on their unique R&D results, have 0 incentive to release research to the public.

Please refer to (2) for studies and theory for why this is untrue.

The number of market entities who only are built on unique R&D tend to fail due to poor delivery of product, so their incentive to release their R&D to the world is more or less moot. I do acknowledge existence of market entities who are built solely on operationalizing R&D -- I challenge the implicit claim that all market entities fall into this category.

[0] https://www.lilly.com/au/policies-reports/transparency-discl...

[1] https://sustainability.lilly.com/governance/business-ethics

[ricardobeat]

You could argue that Bell Labs was essentially government funded, as the monopoly/concession of the entire US telephony infrastructure is what made it possible, and research at universities was not funded anywhere near current levels.

They were also forced in the 1950s to license all their innovations freely, as compensation for holding a monopoly. Which only strengthens the parent’s point that private institutions have little incentive to work for public benefit.

[egberts1]

Galileo wants a word with you ... from heaven.

[Ma8ee]

That whole discussion is based on the assumption that commercial firms or nonprofits are better in some way than publicly funded research. That is the stupid neoliberal dogma that private and market economy always are better than things that are run by our elected officials. That dogma has to die.

[tomrod]

Price as a market signal precedes neoliberalism by several decades to several millennia, depending on which economic historian you speak with. Is your argument that basic research which has no immediately attributable applications is better handled by publicly funded research? I mostly agree to that. Applied research is definitely handled better by commercial firms and nonprofits when handling is defined by what people are willing to value (pay for).

If we're talking about applied technology in the public goods space, then it can be a toss up. Sustainability research, for example, can be quite blurry as to whether the market is pricing it in or not as applied or basic research -- really depends on how a government handles externalities and regulatory capture!

I'll 100% agree to government entities as well as some well-chartered public entities being absolutely awesome at setting up incentive structures for desired outcomes. There is actually a whole field of research dedicated to the topic of incentive structuring called mechanism design -- think of it as the converse to Game Theory and strategic behavioral analysis -- that policy design and analysis learn from.

I'll also note that governments aren't structured to efficiently provide benefits or just-in-time delivery in most situations. Though the discussion has made me more curious about how operationally efficient the DOD is for civilian goods distribution, given it supports a massive population.

[Ma8ee]

I'm pointing out that there is an implied assumption that private always is better than public, and that assumption in many cases is just plain wrong. Not in all cases, market economy works great for many things, but there are also many cases it plainly sucks. When you warn that private initiatives might be crowded out, it is implicit that those are more desirable than public initiatives.

This kind of discussion is a bit off topic here, but I think it is important to remind people that the idea that private always is better than public is ideological dogma, not science. But your latest comment makes me believe you agree with that.

[tomrod]

Yep, we agree in total. You often hear the opposite dogma too, that governments are wonderfully efficient and all markets are broken.

A moderate path, like what we see in the Scandinavian countries, looks to be a better model.

[edwardbernays]

Completely agree. Neoliberalism and its consequences have been a disaster for mankind.

[tomrod]

I disagree. I think Neoliberalism has done a remarkable job bringing the majority of the world out of subsistence. I also think it is a target for hijack by neofeudalists as neoliberalism is realpolitick without self-reference.