What I really wanted to say was that its quite likely that society spends more (much more) on sports entertainment than medical research. Perhaps not wrong. Interesting though.
What's the point in singling out sports entertainment?
Apple cleared $100bb predominately selling consumer electronics, should everyone who bought an iPad feel bad for not donating that $600 to cancer research?
Facebook just threw a billion around on a photo sharing company.
Microsoft just threw a billion so it could acquire some more patent ammunition.
Everyday billions and billions of dollars are thrown around to buy all sorts of things, who gets to decide what spending is "right" and what's "wrong?"
Heh.. Perhaps you might use an apple computer to help cure cancer and you probably wouldn't use a football?
>who gets to decide what spending is "right" and what's "wrong?"
None. Noone. Perhaps not wrong. Interesting though.
Sorry guys, guess I kind of ran this one right off the rails. We underspend on medical research proportionally. That was all. I just tried to pick something a little more interesting than the TSA to joust at this time.
Picking a few billion that sports makes rather than the lots more billion that tech makes feels a little like pandering to the crowd, though (we're geeks, stereotypically don't like sports and "jocks"). A more edgy question, given the audience, would be to ask why our priorities are such that we pump much more money into web startups than cancer research.
Perhaps some scientist gets a new idea while relaxing to a game of football ... you can't really predict what would happen to our society if you start playing around with priorities. Historically such decisions had awful consequences.
Also sorting out the priorities of our society means getting rid of capitalism, and finding
a new economic system that works better is (arguably) a harder problem than currying cancer.
When you factor advertising out of the NFL, NBA, and MLB, I'm not convinced that all three together outstrip medical research. Pfizer alone has an R&D budget higher than the NCI.
I really don't think this is a valid comparison you're making.
I agree that it's unlikely that medical research is less well funded than sports. I do think it's plausible that "critical" medical research (excluding ailments like small-penis and spring allergies) is less well funded than sports, for some reasonable definition of "critical", but I'd be unwilling to put any money one way or the other without doing a bit more research.
I will say, however, that pharmaceutical companies put a tremendous amount of money into researching and marketing treatments for common minor ailments.
When you say "better funded than sports", you're implicating advertising. But advertising revenue is in part of function of the broader economy. F-500s don't buy Super Bowl ads because they love football.
Well, let's not get excited here. I don't think anybody is saying that they think there's some capitalist in a top hat allocating funds, saying "We will put $4B into cancer research to keep the eggheads quiet, and $9B into football to distract and pacify the proles." At least, I hope nobody thinks that.
But the point is that when we, as a society, allocate resources this way, it is an indication of pathological economic behavior, and we need to find solutions for that.
Don't forget the other costs of "moneyball" like giant stadiums every 10 years or so in every major city reorganizing the entire downtown as they are built.
Mostly I agree with your above point about discretionary government spending though, but it would have been pretty low hanging fruit to just say (once again) that the money spent saving us from terrorists would save a lot more of us from cancer.
