Re Trump's budget calls for sensible cuts in research

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: John Gilmore <gnu () toad com>
> Date: March 19, 2017 at 3:49:28 PM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: "ip" <ip () listbox com>
> Subject: Re: [IP] Re Trump's budget calls for sensible cuts in research
>
> > The way to fix the NIDA problem is to fix its charter (or for
> > congress to get out of the research-direction business), NOT to
> > simply lop 20% off the budget.
>
> Lopping money out of the budget IS geting Congress out of the
> research-direction business.  Succeeding at that goal would require
> getting rid of 100% of the research budget, but 20% is a significant
> start.
>
> Congress seems unlikely to fix NIDA's charter.  Of course, Congress
> seems also unlikely to ever cut the federal budget.  Every president
> and every politician who went in promising to do so, has so far
> failed.  All the classic incentives go the other way (c.f. all the
> scientists screaming to not take away what funds the braces for their
> daughters' teeth, oops, I mean not to cut that very important national
> priority, science).  It may take a real sport like Trump to do it.
>
> > I think the real argument is whether our money is better spent on
> > more arms and a wall in the southern desert, or on science and
> > health and local infrastructure.
>
> I think the real argument is whether our money is better spent on what
> governments want to spend our money on -- or on what WE, individually,
> want to spend it on.
>
> The lower the government budget, and the closer the match between
> government spending and government revenues, the more we each have to
> spend however we want.
>
> Mr. Slaney, feel free to support scientists and and researchers with a
> portion of your own money.  I suspect that you would be more selective
> than the US Government about which projects you fund, if it was
> actually YOU deciding which ones to spend it on.  If federal, state,
> and local governments weren't taking about 50% of your income for
> walls, wars, racist cops, NSA, and NIDA, you'd have lots more for
> supporting your choice of altruistic projects.
>
> (I have learned a lot by working as a philanthropist for 17 years.  I
> have spent multiple millions of dollars on the Electronic Frontier
> Foundation, as well as on reforming drug laws.  Both of these efforts
> to improve society are more-or-less directly opposed by government
> agencies that have more than 100x their annual budget.)
>
> Worldwide, Americans are the most generous per-capita funders of
> altruistic projects.  Most of that charity goes to churches, but it
> could go to science if more people had faith in it ;-).  Even more of
> us could afford to donate, if the government wasn't inflating and
> taxing away the value that we all make in the world.  Cutting the
> federal budget is part of making that possible.
>
>    John



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