What Business Owes to Science

[Ilya Shambat]

For a long time, there was a strong movement of people militating
against business. There is some of that now; but there is a much
larger movement of people militating against science, including many
people who have business affiliations. And it is time that this
movement be met head-on.

Science is at the root of all technology; which means that it's at the
root of everything that business sells. Everything that business
produces and that consumer buys - from cars to TVs to computers to
phones to electricity - comes from science. For business-affiliated
people to be militating against science and scientists is a vast case
of irrationality and ingratitude. That is because science is at the
root of everything that business sells.

"Oh, but they're government-funded, they must be socialists." In this
case we are seeing confusion as to who feeds whom. The scientists are
among the hardest-working people in America. And without science,
capitalism would be nothing more than an exchange of basic commodities
at the level it was in Medieval Persia, and most participants in
capitalism would be tilling a 2-acre plot of land and dying in case of
a crop failure.

"But scientists are all liberals." The question to ask there is, why
is that? Well there are any number of reasons for this; but the one
that I find most credible is the financial one. Scientists don't make
very much money for the education and the effort they have to put into
their work; which means that conservatives, who are driven by money,
avoid the field, and the only people we find there are people driven
by service. The same is the case with teachers. Conservatives don't go
into these fields because they don't pay enough; conservatives don't
want to pay tax so the salaries remain low, leading conservatives
still further away from these fields. The conservatives catch
themselves in a double bind. The conservative leadership understands
this, so it does the next best thing and howl about them damn liberals
in schools and the academia. But for as long as these are the
dynamics, this is what we're going to see; and the conservatives won't
visibly boost their presence in these fields unless they either agree
to better funding and better salaries or teach their constituents the
value of service.

"But government should not own science, research should be
privatized." Florida privatized its jails, so now the Florida law
enforcement has an incentive to put away as many people for as long as
they can. I had a friend in Florida who got 2 years for a DUI - a
charge that carries a fine or a month-long sentence - and spent those
two years in a private prison, where guards were giving inmates drugs
in exchange for sex. Privatize science? Will there also be private
armies? Private entities with weapons of mass destruction? Will we
have nuclear feudalism? Al Quaeda is a private organization, and it's
definitely not better than most governments. I don't know about you,
but I would rather be dealing with an elected, official, accountable
governments than with the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Mullah Omar.
Eventually these private entities will have to create some form of
governing institutions to manage the people under them; and I am not
optimistic concerning the character of these governing institutions.

All this is not lost on conservative leadership, so they continue to
howl about the damn liberals in universities and in schools. And yet
without these damn liberals business would have nothing to sell and
the bulk of the population would be unemployable. It is time that
credit be given where it is due and the falsehoods spun on this issue
be confronted. America owes vastly to its scientists, and so does
anyone involved in business.