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Funding For Science
In a voluntary society, how would scientific experiments be funded such as deep space missions? The understanding of evolution, the weather and climate in general, etc? I have a few ideas of my own but I want to hear what others have to say on the issue.
The fact that today’s pure research is tomorrow’s applied research is overmorrow’s commercial product is not lost on any competent CEO. If governments stop funding the pure research, then private companies will pick up the slack because they will have to. I suspect that we will have more research that produces direct benefits and less shrimp running on treadmills, etc.
Here’s another not-evidently-profitable, but privately-funded, high dollar space project: Russian tech investor Yuri Milner is putting $100 million down on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
If the government extorted less of my surplus utility ( earnings) I’d have more available for long term venture capital. Would you rather have Jerry Brown, or Peter Thiel allocating research capital?
I think we might see a return to gentleman scholars or gentleman philanthropists too — not to mention gigantic nerdy crowdfund projects.
Are you curious about whether there’s life under the surface of Mars? How many people on the planet would be willing to pay $10 to contribute to a project that could reasonably answer that question?
Absolutely, in truth, many of these endeavors would actually see the light of day. Most if not all of the governments in this world seem to be occupied war and division.
“Science” at large (anything humans did that was not “natural) was mostly done without government: agriculture, metal casting, animal husbandry, optics, mathematics… I don’t see why deep space exploration cannot be done privately too.
Besides, except for curiosity of our surroundings, is there a genuine interest for such an endeavor? I don’t mean to diminish the importance, but one always has to remember cost and benefits
The economic driver is certainly there. Just think of all the products we could make with all of those mineable minerals in the asteroids.
Is there interest? Well, the reboot of Cosmos has had 135 million viewers worldwide. The Planetary Society has 40,000+ dues paying members. There does seem to be some interest.
I envision a free enterprise University System with cooperation and funding passing between scientists and other private enterprise companies who can bring the valuable ideas to market and where genuine innovation is rewarded. Today’s scientists are handcuffed by government funding and peer reviews dependent on government funding. The University System needs a free enterprise overhaul!
For space exploration there doesn’t necessarily have to be a profit motive or force. The British planetary society has done alot of research and development. Doing the homework on the moon landing as early as the 1930s. As well as more ambitious studies like the interstellar project daedalus. They would have performed more physical research if it wasn’t for the Explosives Act of 1875, which prevented any private testing of liquid-fuel rockets in the United Kingdom.
There where related planetary societies in the US and USSR too however these where absorbed into the state. In a anarchist society the likes of Carl Sagan, Bill Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson would be like televangelists for these societies.
Asteroid mining could still be of interest as resources continue to be depleted on earth and prices increase to justify the immense cost of the operation. Already there is some private investment.
Really these are just back up answers for the real one. Some philanthropist like Elon Musk or Richard Branson are going to pour their wealth into seeing their boyhood dreams within their lifetimes.
True, I don’t believe there must be a profit motive for deep space missions. However, I do believe overcoming the Earth’s gravity to reach space for even low Earth orbit as SpaceX is doing must be profit motivated. Beyond that, this depends upon what type of mission we are describing. Are we looking to capture information for scientific reasons as in “is or was there life on Mars?” Or is the goal more as “let’s setup a colony on the Moon’s surface to provide asteroid astronauts a place to recuperate.”
We are living in an era where crowd-funding of even major scientific projects is becoming more and more realistic. For example:
And then there is also the potential for reducing costs of some types of scientific projects by crowd-sourcing among citizen scientists. SETI@home is a prominent example of this. Citizen Science Alliance Projects are other good examples.
A nice feature of this approach is that the results are more likely to be widely disseminated early on than they would be if these projects were undertaken as business ventures where incentives would more often lead to keeping the information proprietary for longer.
“In a voluntary society, how would scientific experiments be funded such as deep space missions?”
Most likely they will not be funded at all. The reason: the capital used for them can be used for better purposes in other fields of science/technology. What I want to say is that the market would not choose to fund them. These have been projects which were completed ahead of their time. The government has forcefuly concentrated capital to fulfill its needs. In such a way it has made the common people poorer. There is not reason why such a bad politics must continue. When the economy becomes stronger (say in 100 years) these deep space missions will be started.
And yet space projects, including deep space, are already starting to be funded voluntarily:
The first stage of development for CAT: Launch a Water-Propelled Satellite into Deep Space was funded at almost twice the goal amount sought.
ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone was crowd-funded at over 1.5X its goal, for a total of more than $1.5 million in voluntary funding.
The Planetary Society has already raised more than $4 million in private funding toward its estimated $5.75 million in expenses for LightSail, which is currently in space being tested.
What you’re saying won’t be done, already IS being done.
Interesting, I was not aware of these projects until you mentioned them.
Kirsten,
I am glad that such projects exist. Still, if you notice they are very cheap (less than 10 million per project). And the reason is: there is no direct benefit from them except curiosity and interest. That is all the market is willing to give right now. Note that for a deep-space mission (that was the context) you need many billions of USD. You can not obtain the last from the market, even if it was free. In the past the USSR did things like this: 70% of the GDP went to to military and in the meantime the general population had no refrigerators, cars, etc. That is the result from the “involuntary progress”. So let me modify my statement, so that we agree:
MOST of the projects will be abandoned, but not all. Just the cheapest ones will survive, the ones which the market can support.
According to this list, there are only 8 space projects of all time ever to top $1 billion. Why are they so expensive? Free market types might suggest that this is largely because government is doing them. In an actual free market, logic suggests that the price for even these types of missions would come down dramatically as innovators are freed of taxes and regulations. I see no basis for believing that deep space missions necessarily need cost “many billions of USD” in an actual free market.
Moreover, even with heavy taxation and regulation today, we are already seeing droves of people who are curious and interested voluntarily chipping in for these types of missions. With more money in their pockets due to the elimination of taxation in a free market, the number of donors and the amounts donated really have nowhere to go but up, at the same time as prices start dropping.
Let’s also recall that in September 1991, seven crew members stepped inside of Biosphere 2 in the southern Arizona desert as an experiment on the path toward a mission to Mars. That experiment was privately funded to the tune of $150 million+. According to this calculator, that would be $250 million+ in today’s dollars. And that was apparently just from one rich and curious guy.
Kirsten,
Surely the price for deep-space exploration would go down. This by itself, however, would not make deep-space exploration worth the money, because there is no money to be earned (in the years to come). Consequenty, no (or very few) companies would invest there. In short: So far we can only use the near-Earth space economically.
You seem stuck in the tunnel vision of thinking companies are the only way this can happen. I haven’t mentioned companies investing for profit at all. I’ve talked about crowd-sourcing funds from many interested people and also rich individuals conducting major projects for their own curiosity’s sake. And I’ve given examples where these sources of funding are already in play. There’s no speculation needed here. It’s happening.
Kirsten,
No I am not “stuck in the tunnel vision…..”. I am just pointing out that if one wants REAL money to go into deep-space exploration there must be a profit motive (a monetary one). For the time being such a motive is missing. Hopefully it will appear in the future.
Scientific, artistic, and scholarly activity that dries up when the State funding does–good riddance to it.
Great topic. I’m a grad student studying plasma physics, so I’ve thought about this quite a bit. I’m convinced that scientific research, even basic science, would be much better off in the absence of the state. If you guys are really interested in this, there’s a great article by Terence Kealey that makes a powerful case against public science. It’s a little long, but very well-written. Here it is: http://www.cato-unbound.org/2013/08/05/terence-kealey/case-against-public-science
People have always studied science, even when forbidden by the government to do so-in the dark ages for example. Government does not really help scientific research/advancement in the long run and is certainly not needed in my opinion.
By the way, old Feyerabend had many a juicy opinion on the topic. Maybe check out his “Science in a Free Society” (1978). He argued for the Separation of Science & State on all the same bases that religion is supposed to be. Another chapter is headed, “From Incompetent Professionalism to Professionalized Incompetence.”
Two of my favourite books on this topic are “Sex, Science & Profits” and “The Economics of Scientific Research” by Terence Kealey. I’m pretty sure the former is available in the book downloads – check it out if you haven’t already!
