This guy doesn’t think I understand how research works.

The point of government funded research isn’t to fund something forever; it is to provide the seed money necessary to complete the research needed to bring a new product to market. After that the market takes over and, in theory at least, people make tons of money.
That is how research works. You provide funding, you make discoveries, you develop products, and then you sell them. …[I]t almost seems as if he doesn’t understand what “research” actually is.

Me: Is this “how research works?” Sometimes yes, but not always. Just because many industries currently rely on government funding for their research doesn’t mean that’s how it should be—and many industries manage to fund their own research without any boost from taxpayer wallets. Successful private enterprise ought to be able to support its own research. It’s useful to look at the following passage from Cato’s definition of corporate welfare:

Corporate welfare includes programs that provide direct grants to businesses, programs that provide indirect commercial support to businesses, and programs that provide subsidized loans and insurance. Many corporate welfare programs provide private industry with useful services, such as insurance, statistics, research, loans, and marketing support. Those are all functions that the private sector does every day for itself without government help in many industries. If commercial activities are useful and efficient, then private markets should be able to support them free of subsidies. [emphasis mine]

Now, I know that the way things are currently set up means that it’s unrealistic to think that Congress will just draft some magic legislative language and make all such funding disappear in a puff of smoke (though that would be quite a trick). But we should be looking at ways to ease out of this funding model rather than just shrugging our shoulders and saying that this is “how research works.”