 Right, so let's talk a little bit about science funding. So one of the arguments against capitalism that you hear a lot from more sophisticated, if you will, commentators, from economists, from people who look for what are called market failures, problems with capitalism, things that you couldn't do under capitalism without government, is what they call the problem of the funding of science. You know, there's a lot of literature about this. There's a lot of mythology about this. The left has devoted a lot of space, and very few people have counted this argument that, look, today, all the science that we have today is basically funded by the government. You know, government is spending tens of billions of dollars. I mean, I have a number here for just the NIH. The National Institute for Health, I think, spends $43 billion. I read that today somewhere. That's the wrong article. But yeah, $43 billion. Just on biomedical research spent by the government. That's the National Institute for Health. The National Science Foundation spends $8.5 billion on other areas of science. So overall, the government is spending over $50 billion on science. And the argument is, if the government didn't do that, then who would do it? Then basically, it would all be, you know, there would be no science. And therefore, there would be no innovation. And indeed, what they often argue is, look, the internet came out of DARPA. GPS came out of government-funded science. The COVID vaccines, the COVID vaccines ultimately, while vaccines themselves were developed by private businesses, warp speed was government. But more than warp speed, the basic research into mRNA technologies was all basic research funded by the government. So the government should own. The government should, you know, capitalism is dependent. Capitalism could be successful, they argued. Markets could be successful. Technology, Silicon Valley, biotech companies, all they argue, what has happened here? All are basically subsidized by government support for the sciences. And in a free market, there's just no way to do that. There's no way to aggregate $53 billion. It's just too large of a sum to imagine that anybody would be able to fund. Now, of course, this is, I consider, is completely bogus to start out with. And they say, you know, without government support of the sciences, without government support of innovation, without government investment, there is no innovation. Innovation would not happen. I mean, the first point to make about this is that before I'd say World War II, the US government spent almost no money on science and innovation. Almost nothing. I mean, maybe a little bit on some research in the 20s and 30s associated with the military. Maybe some research to university laboratories. But even there, most of the real breakthrough stuff was happening in private corporate laboratories. Thomas Everson was not funded by the government. Right brothers were not funded by the government. And indeed, so how do you explain the massive progress that science made and the massive progress that innovation made in the 19th century and 20th century, early 20th century, before government got involved? Somehow the capital was there. Somehow people invested in themselves or had other people invested in them. JP Morgan famously bankrolled Thomas Edison. Others bankrolled Tesla. And the greatest innovations may be in all of human history in terms of improving human life from electricity to electricity being one to cheap energy oil were all done by the private sector. It was not true that it was government labs that discovered how to turn black muck into the fuel, the fuel, the internal combustion engine, not invented by government research, or to create plastics, as far as I know, not invented by government research. So there is an era in human history where there was massive innovation, massive scientific progress, and relatively little government support. Now, true, it's not $53 billion, but part of the question is, do you need 50, whatever, billion dollars? Do you need that much money? Because one of the things that's true about government support are pretty much anything. It's how inefficient it is. I mean, the current system, I just give you an example as the stat, I hit the stat. There it is. The National Institute for Health of the $43 billion that is provided to research grants to support new science. What percentage do you think goes to young scientists? Now, note that young scientists are the ones that have the breakthroughs. Young scientists are the ones that really are the ones that push the envelope, that discover new stuff, that move knowledge forward. The fact is, for a variety of reasons, the older we get, the more difficult it is to be that creative, that innovative, that groundbreaking. Einstein wrote all of his major pieces. I think it is 20s. I think that's right. Science, like entrepreneurship, like pop music, I guess, is a young person's game. Only 2%, only 2% of the NIH's budget is allocated to scientists 35 years or younger. In other words, 98%, almost the entire budget, goes to scientists 36 years and older. Now, why is that? Why do you think that is? Because it's safe. It's safe. Somebody 36 years or older is probably established, published some articles, well respected in the field, is a known quantity, easier to supervise, less revolutionary. And indeed, you could argue that a big chunk of the 98% is going to science that is just incremental, that is just changing things a little bit at the time. And then the groundbreaking stuff that could be going on is just not going on. It's not happening, because there's no funding for it. Now, a government bureaucracy, this is how it's behaved. When you centralize everything around one entity and it gets to allocate all the resources, it's not unusual that it does a lousy job at it. It's not unusual that it becomes very political, who you know. It's not unusual that they become very risk-averse, that they only fund the big institutions, the famous institutions. They fund, you know, if you've already got a Nobel Prize, it's more likely that you get a grant, even though you're less likely to innovate after you've already got the prize. But it's safer. Once the government, once the funds are funneled through a government institution, it becomes bureaucratized. It becomes standardized. It cosifies. And therefore, the money all goes to older scientists. But it's more than that. The money often goes to scientists working in fields that everybody agrees are good, acceptable scientists, you know, things that don't require big breakthroughs. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com. I go to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. 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