Job Security For UNLV Researchers

Originally posted in a LVRJ Forum

If reprocessing questions are answered during the next few decades or sooner ..

Cosmological-lifetime employment for nuclear chemists and a black hole for taxpayer money. Research is an uncertain activity best left to the *private* sector. The half life of a government program makes Tc look like ²⁰⁴Pb.

Not everything the private sector does should be done, but that which it does not do should NOT be done.

Basic research is an activity with a very low time preference (payoff in the distant future), not unlike planting tree seedlings to make 2x4's. But unlike timber, the practical value of future scientific discovery is impossible to quantify. The only way to make economic sense of it is to make it *highly* focused. The way Intel tackles miniaturization and Genentech virology. Purely academic research has no market discipline. Like all governent programs.

I also oppose public university research funded (corrupted) by private firms.