Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…Yep. They have too many layers of bureaucracy. I would unpack some of those and start all over again and have mandates about funding riskier ideas, younger principal investigators. Perhaps unlike you, I think government funding of science, on average, works, though I don’t think we’re doing it especially well right now. IP, I have mixed feelings on. In some areas I think it should be tighter, others looser. But I’m not sure that’s the main problem. It’s the number of yeses you need to get something done that I tend to focus on as the main barrier. Let me respond to the point about government. Obviously, well-run government science is fabulous. The problem is, it’s not so well run, and we could talk about if we could actually make it better, would it be worthwhile to spend even more money than we do now? The answer, of course, is, “Probably.” It’s really hard to do. As you say, it’s too bureaucratic. There’s a reason for that. It’s done through the government. There’s a certain way that you rise to the top of that hand-out-the-money game. There’s a certain set of reputations. They’re not big on risk-taking.…

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