Thursday 17 February 2011

Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi


This very illuminating paragraph is a comment to the blog post Bloodbath for Science, posted in the Cosmic Variance blog, that talks about the huge cuts in science funding in the USA:
Understand, John: The people proposing these cuts believe that research scientists and staff are not doing any real work *by definition* unless they are employed by the private sector. If your work doesn’t contribute tangibly to some company’s bottom line, and ultimately to the profit of the CEO and shareholders, then your work produces nothing of actual value. In this view, any job that exists as a result of federal funding is, as a matter of principle, disposable and can be cut with no real loss of productivity. If your work is valuable to the private sector, you’ll be hired by some company anyway. If not, it has no value and you shouldn’t be getting paid to do it.
This is probably the most concise and clear explanation about how the mind of politicians not only in the USA, but also in the rest of the world, think. Very depressing. Most depressing yet is that many people will find that absolutely logical.  

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