Draft from February 26, 2026
I’m comparing funding between military and science. It had something to do with what I was reading about on Reddit about funding being cut for science. And there was the belief that military drives innovation. Obviously, government subsidizing Moderna and pharmaceutical companies’ research is an obvious counter example. Specifically, the belief that military makes things innovative is that they just had a ton of money and specific goals and problems to solve. Science could theoretically do the same; the problem is there are some many researchers that funding is spread so thin as to not be able to do large things and do breakthroughs that the military can do with large budgets. AOC claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine should be free because the science behind it was developed mainly by federal government funding, but that discounts all the work and money given by private investments as well, in addition for profit to continue innovation.
There is the argument that we should be more like socialist/communist countries where pharma innovation should be done by the government in the first place, and thus everything would be mostly free besides production. I think it’s partially true, but private companies are needed in times when they aren’t needed by all of society. They’re needed to continue innovating in smaller niches but more importantly to develop talent and random techniques until their grand time is needed. Small innovation is better than none where funding is completely cut due to politics eh hem 2025.