Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Which he will be doing because his notion of "profit" is not measured in dollars but in votes. At least the billionaire's motives are transparent. Here in England we are cutting budgets left, right and centre after the last government nearly bankrupted us. The foreign aid budget is ringfenced. The LibCons have come under a lot of flak for this - but they would have if they'd cut it too - it's simple maths at the end of the day.
Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters. Which he will be doing because his notion of "profit" is not measured in dollars but in votes.
In other words, the politician invests taxes where "we" want them to. So the proper question is not whether some politician wants to help poor nations, but whether we want to help them.
And that's quite a fair question, which is of a much higher quality than the question whether some individual (billionaire) wants to help them.
(After all, taxes are our money and politicians are "just" managing it for us.)
Well, no, not really. This is another aspect of the last government's spending patterns: they measured "success" or "progress" in terms of how much they spent, not the end result. Jo(e) Voter can be told spending a billion on aid is good; he perhaps doesn't see that half of that goes to well-paid quango employees back home, and the other half into a dictator's Swiss bank account.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, on the other hand, is completely focussed on outcomes.
If it is so important to help poor nations, why don't people just vote with their money instead of having to vote in pandering politicians who will nonetheless squander the money?
I mean, at worst, only 51% will get their money spent on things they thought are great noble causes.(Let just assume that every Noble Cause is important) That's not taking into consideration on weather the politicians are managing it wisely.
It would be really great if that was possible. However, we can't simply buy "$1 worth of helping poor nations" in the way we buy products in the supermarket. And that's why we can't "vote" with our money. (The appearance of micro payments might change that, though.)
So we have to trust some organization with the money, and that leads to exactly the same issues of trust.
However, the government is under greater pressure and control than most other organizations. Or, at least they should, in a democracy. So trusting them with the money is not worse than trusting any other help organization with the money - except, of course, when you know the people of the help organization personally. But most people don't have such connections.
With private charities, at least I can move my money around or start my own.
Beside, democracies suck in actuality. Theory doesn't mean much of anything if they don't work in reality. The Californians vote for programs but not for higher taxes. There are whole lot of lobbying that's going on. Who have time to read thousand pages bills made by congressmen?
Instead you would "rely" on a politician taxing his voters.
Well, theoretically with a democratic government, the decision to do things for the public good comes ultimately from the "will of the people" rather than the largess of billionaire. Now whether it actually works out that way is another question.
Still, American publicly funded research has produced a huge number of public benefits while involving a rather small percentage of public expenditure.
> the decision to do things for the public good comes ultimately from the "will of the people"
This is a nice theory, but who is voting on such minor issues, when you have wars, economic turmoil &c.? Absent voter pressure, isn't the reality is that such allocations are determined by lobbying?
> a rather small percentage of public expenditure.
Doesn't the suggestion of crowd-out point to an unexamined cost, which is the opportunity cost of the researchers? What would they be doing if not directed by government monies? If their efforts are being applied sub-optimally, what cost does that represent?
Wall street is one of the largest recipients of government support, via cheap money from the Federal Reserve, bailouts, &c, and is in fact another example of the exact same crowding effect: government money draws bright minds away from more productive pursuits - absent government money, certainly some of those quants would be entrepreneurs or scientists instead.
> contrary to the article, not all goods are private goods
Wall street is one of the largest recipients of government support, via cheap money from the Federal Reserve, bailouts
Not something I support. Basic science is an example of a real public good. "The financial system not collapsing" was only a demagogic pseudo-public good.
No everything the often corrupt US government does is a public good but that hardly proves research is not a public good. The private sector's willingness to facilitate said corrupt government actions doesn't make me believe said private sector would produce more public benefit if a state functions were fully dismembered into it.
-- You are right in the one point, I should have said above, "contrary to the article, public research provides a public good".
Of course, if government had not intervened during the S&L crisis, the precedent of "too big to fail" may never have been set - ignoring for a moment the full ramifications of financial collapse.
The financial sector no longer operates under standard free market rules given TBTF and thus the outsize profits that continue to attract highly educated graduates to Wall Street are secured by fear of total financial collapse.
Under the same rules that all other businesses play by, collapse would wipe out the bad players and free up tremendous resources for new enterprises to start - something that did not occur in the case of Wall Street.
Thus, aspects of Wall Street shape it to appear as another form of government funding/regulation that crowds out real free market enterprises from hiring those brilliant mathematicians.
Remember - the money has to come from somewhere.