[jayasena]

Clearly government has had a successful role in driving technological advances (such as the development of the internet, and the space program, which generated "astronomical" returns on investments in basic science, at least in the mid-20th century), but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a decent economist who could argue with a straight face that governments tend to be better venture capitalists than the "free markets" (which don't really exist in the modern era).  Without getting into a rat-hole debate, many would argue that "governmental investment" often crowds-out (or at least delays) private investment, with the classic example being "if the government had funded and prescribed the development of the cell phone, we'd all still be carrying 20 pound briefcase phones instead of iPhones!".

LuckE2Bhere, if what you want from academia is "research" that could potentially be productized in 2-4 years, private/commercial sources are absolutely who you'd want as your sugar daddies. No question. But if you want to do basic research with a time horizon approaching a decade or more, there's no real alternative to government funding (and its various agencies). And academia *has* to do the long-term stuff or no one else will (in case you haven't noticed, we can no longer rely on the likes of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC since the focus on short-term returns has essentially made those sorts of industrial research organizations all but extinct).

[jayasena]

Clearly government has had a successful role in driving technological advances (such as the development of the internet, and the space program, which generated "astronomical" returns on investments in basic science, at least in the mid-20th century), but I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a decent economist who could argue with a straight face that governments tend to be better venture capitalists than the "free markets" (which don't really exist in the modern era).  Without getting into a rat-hole debate, many would argue that "governmental investment" often crowds-out (or at least delays) private investment, with the classic example being "if the government had funded and prescribed the development of the cell phone, we'd all still be carrying 20 pound briefcase phones instead of iPhones!".

LuckE2Bhere, if what you want from academia is "research" that could potentially be productized in 2-4 years, private/commercial sources are absolutely who you'd want as your sugar daddies. No question. But if you want to do basic research with a time horizon approaching a decade or more, there's no real alternative to government funding (and its various agencies). And academia *has* to do the long-term stuff or no one else will (in case you haven't noticed, we can no longer rely on the likes of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC since the focus on short-term returns has essentially made those sorts of industrial research organizations all but extinct).