20th January 2008, 5:29 PM
Scientists would do best, I would imagine. Substantial government funding is certainly needed for much of anything useful to happen, but partisanship in appropriations doesn't really help anyone long-term... even so though, it's unavoidable. Ideally the scientists in the government agencies would make requests, and lawmakers would then take those requests and work with it.
Taxes are good; they make government work, and government is good overall. Of course this can be mismanaged, as Bush has (cutting off family-planning funding for nations that want to teach birth control and contraception? Banning government funding of stem-cell research when the alternative is that those stem cells are simply going to be thrown away? Politics should not have a place in decisions how to allocate money for science... safety and good sense should, but politics? The EPA should not be making decisions based on the political opinions of the administration, as they have under Bush, but based on the actual SCIENCE behind the decisions coming before them!), but even so, overall it is a good thing.
Anyway, the free market left alone? Well, look what happens when we do that... monopolies, trusts, industry elites telling the government how to spend its money... these things are bad and should be avoided. Capitalism as practiced, without government action, turns toward monopoly, as history shows. There must be government controls. Of course, the issue of how far exactly to take those controls is an extremely difficult one, and I'm pretty bad at economics, so I can't really say...
Oh yes, I am definitely in favor of tying free-market trading to environmental and political issues -- ideally we would NOT be trading with China without substantial duties being put on all of their goods because of the fact that they are the world's #1 human rights abuser. We should NOT have free-trade treaties that do not have environmental qualifications (so we make as sure as possible that the treaty will not wreck the environment of the nation in question -- the factories being built there need to be at least as safe and environmentally friendly as ones here...) and human-rights ones as well, as above. NAFTA has been a horrible failure, and one of its most prominent failings (beyond loss of American jobs) is what it's done to Mexico... Mexico has NOT been helped like some thought it would. Those factories are nothing like American ones in safety, pollution, and, most importantly (for Mexican ones), wages...
Taxes are good; they make government work, and government is good overall. Of course this can be mismanaged, as Bush has (cutting off family-planning funding for nations that want to teach birth control and contraception? Banning government funding of stem-cell research when the alternative is that those stem cells are simply going to be thrown away? Politics should not have a place in decisions how to allocate money for science... safety and good sense should, but politics? The EPA should not be making decisions based on the political opinions of the administration, as they have under Bush, but based on the actual SCIENCE behind the decisions coming before them!), but even so, overall it is a good thing.
Anyway, the free market left alone? Well, look what happens when we do that... monopolies, trusts, industry elites telling the government how to spend its money... these things are bad and should be avoided. Capitalism as practiced, without government action, turns toward monopoly, as history shows. There must be government controls. Of course, the issue of how far exactly to take those controls is an extremely difficult one, and I'm pretty bad at economics, so I can't really say...
Oh yes, I am definitely in favor of tying free-market trading to environmental and political issues -- ideally we would NOT be trading with China without substantial duties being put on all of their goods because of the fact that they are the world's #1 human rights abuser. We should NOT have free-trade treaties that do not have environmental qualifications (so we make as sure as possible that the treaty will not wreck the environment of the nation in question -- the factories being built there need to be at least as safe and environmentally friendly as ones here...) and human-rights ones as well, as above. NAFTA has been a horrible failure, and one of its most prominent failings (beyond loss of American jobs) is what it's done to Mexico... Mexico has NOT been helped like some thought it would. Those factories are nothing like American ones in safety, pollution, and, most importantly (for Mexican ones), wages...
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