The idiots are everywhere

[Update: This post on Slashdot was too good not to repeat here: "I'll put it in StarCraft terms: you're spending your minerals on upgrading your Zealots, and failing to invest in the pylons and tech structures that would allow you to build a whole frickin' fleet of Protoss Carriers."]

...and they're making policy. Here's one that hit rather close to home.

This is profoundly short-sighted, not to mention just plain stupid. Most of the policies of this government are explicable in terms of cronyism or fucked up ideology. Slashing basic research grants is just plain stupid...it doesn't benefit anybody, and it ultimately hurts everybody, including the corporate world.

See, basic research has a particular definition in economics. It's research that aims to promote basic understanding of a given field without regard to its potential applications. And it turns out that in general it's a) vital to the eventual creation of tangible and practical results, and b) it doesn't usually make sense for private industry to undertake it. For one thing it often costs too much for any single entity to do it (there's a reason that really only Microsoft does basic research in CS...IBM sort of does, but they seem to demand far more tangible results from their researchers), and moreover there's a much higher overall benefit to the country if government undertakes it. Government promotes the basic research that is then available to the general public, and that research creates a marketplace in which entrepreneurs spring up, compete, and drive the research to tangible results. And any honest conservative who knows even the slightest sliver of economics understands this. The technologies that underpin the internet came out of DARPA basic research grants, grants that did not diminish even during the Vietnam war.

To cut such grants now just because our fucktard Republican leaders blew our financial wad in Iraq is like starving yourself after making yourself ill. The harm the funding evaporation will cause offsets by orders of magnitude the temporary savings it will allow.

Moreover, it's plunging a knife into the heart of one of the few areas Americans still hold a competitive advantage in. We suck at everything else: our primary education system sucks, our children are stupid, we can't manufacture anything for shit any more, etc. etc. etc. The only thing we have left are the institutions of higher learning and the raw intellectual horsepower of the top academics, especially in technology. People still come to the US for the best secondary education, and we still generate the most cutting edge research. The only other asset the United States still has is fuckloads of money. But you know what? Money moves easily. The point at which financial institutions and corporations find it cheaper to operate overseas, especially in countries like India and China, the fuckers are gone. The leaves of the corporate hierarchy are now mostly overseas already...it just happens that the money still funnels back to roots in the US. I don't know how long that will last, however.

It's fucking frustrating, and it's stupid, more so because I may well eventually be affected by it. The world will need computer science researchers for a good bit of time to come, and it's not like there will suddenly be no job for me. But it's nonetheless infuriating to watch the United States happily shoot itself in the foot. Is this the beginning of the end for the American empire? Are we really destined to live for only a hundred years more? If so, we fucking suck...Rome will have kicked our ass by millenia.

(and I'm not even going to go into the citizenship requirements...fucking xenophobic morons. Care to guess how many of my fellow computer scientists _didn't_ come from a foreign country???)