Physics PhD student working and doing research at a government-funded lab here. I agree with pretty much all of this. But there are a few things I'd like to add.
> [The Higgs Boson] has no practical applications for now, and although it might in the future
Correction from a physicist here: the Higgs Boson will definitely never have any practical applications. I can say that with the same complete confidence I can say about e.g. knowledge of planets 100s of light years away never having any practical applications.
I still totally agree with you that there is a different kind of value that these results provide. Even they will never have practical, economic value, exploring these questions about our place in the universe is a deep and important part of the human endeavor, and we should that for its own sake.
Also, while the knowledge of e.g. the Higgs Boson or exoplanets will never directly provide practical economic value, there is value provided by all the research into advanced technologies needed to make these measurements happen. Things like superconducting materials for the magnets in the LHC, advanced optics for exoplanet telescopes, high-speed computing to process the data from the LHC, etc.
These advances prompted by these basic science quests do provide practical economic value, although I think they are susceptible to the crowding-out effect you mention (sure, trying to build the LHC leads to advances in superconductors, but you would make more advances per dollar by just paying people to research superconductors). That being said, there's another more subtle reason these projects lead to advances in practical technology that isn't susceptible to a crowding out effect: they are great at drawing in young, smart people into science, many of which will later transition into more applied roles. Many smart, idealistic 20-somethings don't get so excited by practical technology development, but do get excited by grand quests such as searching for fundamental particles or for far-off exoplanets. Many of these scientists will later go on to more applied fields, as there are very few jobs at a senior level in these non-applied scientists. This is a good way to entice them to get trained as scientists, and not to go into less productive fields (essentially I'm making your "prestige" argument but slightly different).
That effect is kind of what happened with me. Earlier in my 20s, I was idealistic and wanted to do theoretical physics/math work that wasn't super applied. As I grew up and matured, I gained an appreciation for the practical, and transitioned to more applied/experimental physics work. That's what I do now: I research quantum computing at a government-funded lab (Sandia National Lab).
The means are the ends. When you steal to fund something you want, you poison the effort. You also misalign the incentives of all people involved. If you value scientific research, don't use stolen money to fund it and don't use the political process (one of the most evil things we have invented) to direct the resources.
If humans value this research (and many of us do), they will band together voluntarily to create institutions to fund it. There will be dynamic competition in the research space. All the incentives of all interested parties will be aligned. With coercion eliminated, the best traits of humanity can be focused on discovering the secrets of this amazing universe we find ourselves in.
All "public goods" arguments are just a lazy pseudo-scientific veneer to justify one group of people stealing from another group of people. Same with "solving coordination problems". The problem is that the people you're stealing from don't share your vision.
Fortunately, the desire for "pure research" is one shared by a very many people. Quit being lazy. Put down the gun. Fund these efforts honestly, and see the results blossom.
Also, thanks for an interesting article, though I disagree with much of it.
> The means are the ends. When you steal to fund something you want, you poison the effort. You also misalign the incentives of all people involved. If you value scientific research, don't use stolen money to fund it and don't use the political process (one of the most evil things we have invented) to direct the resources.
If you value fighting fires, don't use stolen money to fund it, and don't use the political process (one of the most evil things we have invented) to direct the resources.
What a silly argument. Why not fund everything without public money? Let's have police, fire fighters, military, roads, etc, all made by private money. It'll work so well, that's why literally no functional country does it!
It's possible to steal money and then spend it more efficiently than it would have been spent. But there's no reason to expect that by default, and the presumption is against you.
There are real public goods/coordination arguments involved in proposals like dominant assurance contracts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_assurance_contracts it's just that few people actually care about any of that (which is what led Robin Hanson to co-write Elephant in the Brain).
Ruxandra is wrong about Caplan. At a minimum, there are a decent number of people who were born as a result of his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He’s also taken some big swings in some of his other books; TBD whether they will have a big payoff too.
> I would argue that there is furthermore a category of research that may never have an economic payoff but is valuable for its own sake.
What makes something valuable? The perspective of economics is that value is subjective, and if people are willing to pay for something, then it is worth at least as much as they were willing to pay. But that doesn't apply to the government spending our tax dollars. Instead, if there is a "public good" that isn't excludable but people actually value, Alex Tabarrok's dominant assurance contracts can provide it if and ONLY if people actually do value it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_assurance_contracts
There is relatively little interest in that mechanism, because few are interested in efficiently (in an economic sense) providing actual public goods. A DAC is a way of determining whether a project actually merits a certain amount of funding, whereas the subjective opinion of one person (who isn't himself paying for it) does not. It also avoids the labor scientists spend on applying for grants.
> I don’t care if the average voter would rather have food stamps or more giveaways to the elderly, or even tax cuts.
The average voter doesn't need to care what you care, since that's just one individual's subjective opinion.
> Yet I don’t think I would put in nearly as much effort towards becoming some corporate bigwig at Walmart.
Things would be different if the IRS had your genetic potential for income and levied a head-tax on you, pushing you to take the most lucrative job you could. That would be more economically efficient than income taxes that discourage earning more money.
> the prestige economy maximizes the potential to do good
I don't think you're giving enough thought to ACTUAL maximization. Maximize a function and the derivative should go to zero. Where do you see that happening?
> This is perhaps a benefit of the peer review system
A system that post-dates Einstein, who wanted nothing to do with it.
> we should think about how to make sure that the prestige economies we support are ones that are pro-social.
Indeed, we should, because we aren't even close to a maximum. Including the less BS parts of universities like "the more mathematical parts of academic economics, physics, computer science, and statistics" https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/star-trek-as-fantasyhtml
> Usually not as powerful as markets
And less efficiently as far as taxation is concerned, because we currently tax income rather than potential income.
> At the same time, there is a substantial, disproportionately high IQ and agentic, portion of the population that needs a prestige economy in order to truly flourish.
Going back to Einstein, he had his miracle year while working as a patent clerk.
> I think that’s a potential danger
Not just a "potential danger", it actually happens every day. You yourself regard certain fields as worthless. You need a mechanism to separate the wheat from the chaff.
> or at least what I classify as knowledge that is good for its own sake
Why should anyone else care what YOU specifically regard as inherently good? We're talking about public policy, not what you choose to fund yourself. The utilitarian frame asks what EVERYONE regards as good.
> the idea that being free to pursue their own interests will get a lot more effort out of them makes sense to me
It might be that anti-capitalist studies gets a lot of effort out of some professors, but that doesn't make it "socially useful labor" as Marx would put it.
You missed perhaps the best argument against state-sponsored science: it consistently evolves Lysenkoism. By this I mean scientific untruth that is generally believed to be good science, protected against falsification by state action. In Lysenko's case, enforced by the Soviet Union's harsh methods. Our variant enforces its dominance via the kinder, gentler methods of educational gatekeeping and credentialism, and the denial of "funding" to scientific dissidents.
We don't have a clear name for that system, but in recent years its results are what some people (on both sides) have called "The Science".
In this house we believe: Science is Real! Do you believe in The Science?
If you do, then you probably think The Science is just science -- that is, truth to our best approximation. Maybe then you worry about whether or not state-sponsored science is crowding out hypothetical free-market science. Could SpaceX explore Mars cheaper and better than NASA does? Uh, this seems possible (cheaper but later, and also worse seems more likely) but also not really a problem in any case.
What is a problem is, i.e., Keynesian economics evolving to justify inflation / abandoning hard money, increasing state debt and overspending -- hard to put a price tag on it. But the effects in particular of inflation on the poor have been IMO catastrophic.
Or virology evolving into its modern form which insists on staying relevant via gain-of-function research. Whoopsie! 25m dead? Ish?
This article does reinforce my belief that American science is fast approaching a very dangerous interregnum. However, I have come to realize that perhaps democracy is hardly ideal, and perhaps quite unsuitable as a funding mechanism for science. For this reason, I believe that the best course of action is to create an independent research foundation devoid of federal funding, and convince the more technically minded billionaires of the merits of basic research. Ideally, one would seek the support of a family, as opposed to a single wealthy businessman. The projects that will be necessary for the next great leap in scientific discovery require the stability that only a dynastic source of support can provide.
These might be compelling arguments for why people might want to contribute to such projects, but they are not compelling arguments for a general policy of having the government force people to pay for them. You should be free to voluntarily fund all sorts of seemingly worthy projects, and to persuade others to join you. But you, or your proxies, should not force others to fund them for you.
There is virtually no limit to what people are willing to spend other people's resources on. If basic morality could be a reasonable limiting factor, then that seems like a better policy than the alternatives.
The argument is that the taxpayer is unquestionably better off in a world that has the internet, gps, cryptography, etc - just as they are better off in a society that has roads and police departments.
It's a very bad argument that mischaracterizes the alternatives. Are you confident that you would be better off in a world where others decide how to allocate more (or all) of what you've earned, so long as they claim that it might make you better off?
The question here is not about whether “others allocate all of what you’ve earned”, it’s about a specific allocation that has an enormous amount of evidence working for it. You’re moving the goalposts from “some amount of government science” to “totalitarian socialism” because the former is hard to argue against.
You misquoted "more (or all)" into "all" and then accused me of moving the goalposts. I only included "all" to remind readers of the horrible system this suggestion justifies moving us a step towards (on a road paved with good intentions).
> I don’t think a pure libertarian model can explain how much innovation actually comes out of government, including certain communist successes in science and engineering. The Soviet Union, despite its lack of private enterprise and market incentives, produced an extraordinary range of scientific achievements….
This is an absurd straw man of libertarianism. Of course the Soviet Union viciously redistributing resources to scientific research produces scientific advances. The question is whether that allocation is moral and, secondarily, socially optimal. The libertarian answer to both is "no." Your answer is "yes," because you just want society to adopt your personal utility function:
> [T]here is…a category of research that may never have an economic payoff but is valuable for its own sake.
> I still want to know these things.
> I see certain forms of knowledge as good in and of themselves.
> …what I classify as knowledge that is good for its own sake.
Unfortunately, you never get to the hard part of the argument: proving these things are per se good. You just beg the question repeatedly. (Perhaps your response will be: if only I were EHC, this would be self-evident. But that verges on tautology.)
If instead of pursuing a maximally meaningful career, you "applied [your] intelligence…to a more lucrative corporate job," you would "end up wealthier," and you could use that wealth to fund the research you liked. But you'd rather others pay that opportunity cost for you, so you suggest robbing them and funding your favorite research with their money.
The discussion of Soviet science and the role of religion in human life basically hits the nail on the head of why I no longer consider myself a libertarian. If more libertarians could acknowledge these key points, it would be a much robust and rich worldview.
I think private enterprise would support more prestige research if given the chance. However, antitrust law prevents companies from becoming large or profitable enough to fund these types of projects. Companies like Bell Labs, Microsoft, & Google may have sponsored a wide range of research if they weren't preoccupied with being sued by the DOJ for being too successful.
Universities and their STEM departments would continue to exist even without public grants, so the choice isn’t as you frame it. But the deepest problem is that vast government funding all but renders the current scientific paradigm “too big to fail,” thus preventing science from evolving. What’s being “crowded out” isn’t corporate science but the next scientific revolution. You write as if the current paradigm is the end of history. But it’s really just the end of progress.
I may not agree with everything you write but you are, without doubt, one of the most intelligent and thought provoking commentators on the web. More power to you
Physics PhD student working and doing research at a government-funded lab here. I agree with pretty much all of this. But there are a few things I'd like to add.
> [The Higgs Boson] has no practical applications for now, and although it might in the future
Correction from a physicist here: the Higgs Boson will definitely never have any practical applications. I can say that with the same complete confidence I can say about e.g. knowledge of planets 100s of light years away never having any practical applications.
I still totally agree with you that there is a different kind of value that these results provide. Even they will never have practical, economic value, exploring these questions about our place in the universe is a deep and important part of the human endeavor, and we should that for its own sake.
Also, while the knowledge of e.g. the Higgs Boson or exoplanets will never directly provide practical economic value, there is value provided by all the research into advanced technologies needed to make these measurements happen. Things like superconducting materials for the magnets in the LHC, advanced optics for exoplanet telescopes, high-speed computing to process the data from the LHC, etc.
These advances prompted by these basic science quests do provide practical economic value, although I think they are susceptible to the crowding-out effect you mention (sure, trying to build the LHC leads to advances in superconductors, but you would make more advances per dollar by just paying people to research superconductors). That being said, there's another more subtle reason these projects lead to advances in practical technology that isn't susceptible to a crowding out effect: they are great at drawing in young, smart people into science, many of which will later transition into more applied roles. Many smart, idealistic 20-somethings don't get so excited by practical technology development, but do get excited by grand quests such as searching for fundamental particles or for far-off exoplanets. Many of these scientists will later go on to more applied fields, as there are very few jobs at a senior level in these non-applied scientists. This is a good way to entice them to get trained as scientists, and not to go into less productive fields (essentially I'm making your "prestige" argument but slightly different).
That effect is kind of what happened with me. Earlier in my 20s, I was idealistic and wanted to do theoretical physics/math work that wasn't super applied. As I grew up and matured, I gained an appreciation for the practical, and transitioned to more applied/experimental physics work. That's what I do now: I research quantum computing at a government-funded lab (Sandia National Lab).
It seems like the money spent on the LHC would have been better spent directly on those advanced technologies necessary for it.
The means are the ends. When you steal to fund something you want, you poison the effort. You also misalign the incentives of all people involved. If you value scientific research, don't use stolen money to fund it and don't use the political process (one of the most evil things we have invented) to direct the resources.
If humans value this research (and many of us do), they will band together voluntarily to create institutions to fund it. There will be dynamic competition in the research space. All the incentives of all interested parties will be aligned. With coercion eliminated, the best traits of humanity can be focused on discovering the secrets of this amazing universe we find ourselves in.
All "public goods" arguments are just a lazy pseudo-scientific veneer to justify one group of people stealing from another group of people. Same with "solving coordination problems". The problem is that the people you're stealing from don't share your vision.
Fortunately, the desire for "pure research" is one shared by a very many people. Quit being lazy. Put down the gun. Fund these efforts honestly, and see the results blossom.
Also, thanks for an interesting article, though I disagree with much of it.
> The means are the ends. When you steal to fund something you want, you poison the effort. You also misalign the incentives of all people involved. If you value scientific research, don't use stolen money to fund it and don't use the political process (one of the most evil things we have invented) to direct the resources.
If you value fighting fires, don't use stolen money to fund it, and don't use the political process (one of the most evil things we have invented) to direct the resources.
What a silly argument. Why not fund everything without public money? Let's have police, fire fighters, military, roads, etc, all made by private money. It'll work so well, that's why literally no functional country does it!
Yes, everything should be funded without public money.
It's possible to steal money and then spend it more efficiently than it would have been spent. But there's no reason to expect that by default, and the presumption is against you.
There are real public goods/coordination arguments involved in proposals like dominant assurance contracts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_assurance_contracts it's just that few people actually care about any of that (which is what led Robin Hanson to co-write Elephant in the Brain).
Ruxandra is wrong about Caplan. At a minimum, there are a decent number of people who were born as a result of his book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He’s also taken some big swings in some of his other books; TBD whether they will have a big payoff too.
> I would argue that there is furthermore a category of research that may never have an economic payoff but is valuable for its own sake.
What makes something valuable? The perspective of economics is that value is subjective, and if people are willing to pay for something, then it is worth at least as much as they were willing to pay. But that doesn't apply to the government spending our tax dollars. Instead, if there is a "public good" that isn't excludable but people actually value, Alex Tabarrok's dominant assurance contracts can provide it if and ONLY if people actually do value it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assurance_contract#Dominant_assurance_contracts
There is relatively little interest in that mechanism, because few are interested in efficiently (in an economic sense) providing actual public goods. A DAC is a way of determining whether a project actually merits a certain amount of funding, whereas the subjective opinion of one person (who isn't himself paying for it) does not. It also avoids the labor scientists spend on applying for grants.
> I don’t care if the average voter would rather have food stamps or more giveaways to the elderly, or even tax cuts.
The average voter doesn't need to care what you care, since that's just one individual's subjective opinion.
> Yet I don’t think I would put in nearly as much effort towards becoming some corporate bigwig at Walmart.
Things would be different if the IRS had your genetic potential for income and levied a head-tax on you, pushing you to take the most lucrative job you could. That would be more economically efficient than income taxes that discourage earning more money.
> the prestige economy maximizes the potential to do good
I don't think you're giving enough thought to ACTUAL maximization. Maximize a function and the derivative should go to zero. Where do you see that happening?
> This is perhaps a benefit of the peer review system
A system that post-dates Einstein, who wanted nothing to do with it.
> we should think about how to make sure that the prestige economies we support are ones that are pro-social.
Indeed, we should, because we aren't even close to a maximum. Including the less BS parts of universities like "the more mathematical parts of academic economics, physics, computer science, and statistics" https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/star-trek-as-fantasyhtml
> Usually not as powerful as markets
And less efficiently as far as taxation is concerned, because we currently tax income rather than potential income.
> At the same time, there is a substantial, disproportionately high IQ and agentic, portion of the population that needs a prestige economy in order to truly flourish.
Going back to Einstein, he had his miracle year while working as a patent clerk.
> I think that’s a potential danger
Not just a "potential danger", it actually happens every day. You yourself regard certain fields as worthless. You need a mechanism to separate the wheat from the chaff.
> or at least what I classify as knowledge that is good for its own sake
Why should anyone else care what YOU specifically regard as inherently good? We're talking about public policy, not what you choose to fund yourself. The utilitarian frame asks what EVERYONE regards as good.
> the idea that being free to pursue their own interests will get a lot more effort out of them makes sense to me
It might be that anti-capitalist studies gets a lot of effort out of some professors, but that doesn't make it "socially useful labor" as Marx would put it.
You missed perhaps the best argument against state-sponsored science: it consistently evolves Lysenkoism. By this I mean scientific untruth that is generally believed to be good science, protected against falsification by state action. In Lysenko's case, enforced by the Soviet Union's harsh methods. Our variant enforces its dominance via the kinder, gentler methods of educational gatekeeping and credentialism, and the denial of "funding" to scientific dissidents.
We don't have a clear name for that system, but in recent years its results are what some people (on both sides) have called "The Science".
In this house we believe: Science is Real! Do you believe in The Science?
If you do, then you probably think The Science is just science -- that is, truth to our best approximation. Maybe then you worry about whether or not state-sponsored science is crowding out hypothetical free-market science. Could SpaceX explore Mars cheaper and better than NASA does? Uh, this seems possible (cheaper but later, and also worse seems more likely) but also not really a problem in any case.
What is a problem is, i.e., Keynesian economics evolving to justify inflation / abandoning hard money, increasing state debt and overspending -- hard to put a price tag on it. But the effects in particular of inflation on the poor have been IMO catastrophic.
Or virology evolving into its modern form which insists on staying relevant via gain-of-function research. Whoopsie! 25m dead? Ish?
This article does reinforce my belief that American science is fast approaching a very dangerous interregnum. However, I have come to realize that perhaps democracy is hardly ideal, and perhaps quite unsuitable as a funding mechanism for science. For this reason, I believe that the best course of action is to create an independent research foundation devoid of federal funding, and convince the more technically minded billionaires of the merits of basic research. Ideally, one would seek the support of a family, as opposed to a single wealthy businessman. The projects that will be necessary for the next great leap in scientific discovery require the stability that only a dynastic source of support can provide.
Dominant assurance contracts are a mechanism for funding what people actually want.
These might be compelling arguments for why people might want to contribute to such projects, but they are not compelling arguments for a general policy of having the government force people to pay for them. You should be free to voluntarily fund all sorts of seemingly worthy projects, and to persuade others to join you. But you, or your proxies, should not force others to fund them for you.
There is virtually no limit to what people are willing to spend other people's resources on. If basic morality could be a reasonable limiting factor, then that seems like a better policy than the alternatives.
The argument is that the taxpayer is unquestionably better off in a world that has the internet, gps, cryptography, etc - just as they are better off in a society that has roads and police departments.
Government provision is not required for roads, they can and have long been privately funded via user fees.
It's a very bad argument that mischaracterizes the alternatives. Are you confident that you would be better off in a world where others decide how to allocate more (or all) of what you've earned, so long as they claim that it might make you better off?
The question here is not about whether “others allocate all of what you’ve earned”, it’s about a specific allocation that has an enormous amount of evidence working for it. You’re moving the goalposts from “some amount of government science” to “totalitarian socialism” because the former is hard to argue against.
You misquoted "more (or all)" into "all" and then accused me of moving the goalposts. I only included "all" to remind readers of the horrible system this suggestion justifies moving us a step towards (on a road paved with good intentions).
We should be moving the other way.
> I don’t think a pure libertarian model can explain how much innovation actually comes out of government, including certain communist successes in science and engineering. The Soviet Union, despite its lack of private enterprise and market incentives, produced an extraordinary range of scientific achievements….
This is an absurd straw man of libertarianism. Of course the Soviet Union viciously redistributing resources to scientific research produces scientific advances. The question is whether that allocation is moral and, secondarily, socially optimal. The libertarian answer to both is "no." Your answer is "yes," because you just want society to adopt your personal utility function:
> [T]here is…a category of research that may never have an economic payoff but is valuable for its own sake.
> I still want to know these things.
> I see certain forms of knowledge as good in and of themselves.
> …what I classify as knowledge that is good for its own sake.
Unfortunately, you never get to the hard part of the argument: proving these things are per se good. You just beg the question repeatedly. (Perhaps your response will be: if only I were EHC, this would be self-evident. But that verges on tautology.)
If instead of pursuing a maximally meaningful career, you "applied [your] intelligence…to a more lucrative corporate job," you would "end up wealthier," and you could use that wealth to fund the research you liked. But you'd rather others pay that opportunity cost for you, so you suggest robbing them and funding your favorite research with their money.
See Sabine Hossenfelder on high energy physics.
The discussion of Soviet science and the role of religion in human life basically hits the nail on the head of why I no longer consider myself a libertarian. If more libertarians could acknowledge these key points, it would be a much robust and rich worldview.
I think private enterprise would support more prestige research if given the chance. However, antitrust law prevents companies from becoming large or profitable enough to fund these types of projects. Companies like Bell Labs, Microsoft, & Google may have sponsored a wide range of research if they weren't preoccupied with being sued by the DOJ for being too successful.
Universities and their STEM departments would continue to exist even without public grants, so the choice isn’t as you frame it. But the deepest problem is that vast government funding all but renders the current scientific paradigm “too big to fail,” thus preventing science from evolving. What’s being “crowded out” isn’t corporate science but the next scientific revolution. You write as if the current paradigm is the end of history. But it’s really just the end of progress.
This is an interesting case where I can tell the thesis is true, important, and rather newish just from reading the title and subtitle.
I guess I should read the essay, too... Sometime soon!
Well, you're not wrong, but isn't this just the high human capital version of "We're a country not an economy."?
Ah very intriguing idea.
I may not agree with everything you write but you are, without doubt, one of the most intelligent and thought provoking commentators on the web. More power to you
> I’d still be glad that the government supports Bryan being able to make a living writing about why everyone should be a libertarian.
If the government didn't fund writing about politics, I suspect that would be better for libertarianism and anti-statism. Otherwise, great essay.