Re Trump's budget calls for sensible cuts in research

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker () gmail com>
Date: Sun, Mar 19, 2017 at 8:41 PM
Subject: Re: [IP] Re Trump's budget calls for sensible cuts in research
To: <dave () farber net>, ip <ip () listbox com>


On 3/19/2017 1:02 PM, Dave Farber wrote:
> 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.


Yes, let's get rid of all forms of representation and have everyone
participate in the making of every decision that isn't strictly private.
  Everyone will have to be fully involved and fully knowledge about
every topic.

What?  You think that's a silly proposition?  But it is the essential
implication of the above "feel free" directive.

Human society and human knowledge got complex.  Simplistic, absolute
democracy doesn't work in the face of that complexity.  That's why human
society moved towards specialization.  Sometimes too much?  Sure.  But
baby, bathwater, don't.

Representative forms of decision-making do certainly are terrible...
Except for the alternatives.  (Apologies to Churchill and whoever he was
quoting.)

The fact that one or another representative decision-process is
problematic does not mean it should be eliminated.  Simplistic
replacements have an extremely poor track record, because they are based
more on fantasy than pragmatics.  Fix what is broken; don't throw it away.

d/


--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net



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