Iowa Caucuses Today!

[Dark Jaguar]

Ron Paul would surely disagree; the market is all knowing. If the market decides that there's no money for research, it means there's no demand (and therefore need) for research. Yes, you can disagree with this, but many old men with doctorates in fancy disciplines like philosophy and economics have written long and boring books describing why they think it's true. That makes it a theory, and apparently one that Ron Paul adheres to.

The market is made up of idiots. Their doctorates failed to do any actual experiments to back it up. I base this on the fact that the market for quack medicine makes money up to and exceeding the market for legitimate medicine. The market is not all knowing. What do they base their conclusion on?

No, letting "the market" decide where research should be done is as short-sighted as the market itself. The market does not consider the long term results of research, only that which is immediate, but science for science's sake has value. For example, you could never have had a research department in the 1600's say "let's put all our money into making a way to put images and sounds of ourselves into everyone's home whenever we want". No, no matter how much money, they couldn't just make that happen. Science for it's own sake with no way to know how it might affect people in a practical sense was needed. That's where we get Maxwell's equations.

A large amount of economic philosophy is utter bunk.

Okay I do have more to say. Do you really think that a wide spread request from laypeople tells you if there is a proper need? By and large many people likely would not actually demand this or that bit of research if you told them about it, but the moment it's done, bam, suddenly their interest is perked up when they realize that this or that thing they would previously have thought was a waste of money actually benefits them. In a lot of science, demand comes AFTER the science, not before.