Scientific innovation has been driving US economic growth for decades. Losing that edge means losing access to the technologies and brainpower that come with it.
I think it’s more of a way to get a quantitative comparison rather than just being about money. Don’t get me wrong, money has corrupted everything. But in certain cases when you need to compare value between things, the closest thing we have to a common denominator is moolah.
And how do you compare the results? Can you say definitively that a cure for one disease is more important than another? What metrics do we use? Number of lives affected? Physical pain avoided? Who decides the final say in value? You need a medium to get an approximate value.
I think it’s more of a way to get a quantitative comparison rather than just being about money. Don’t get me wrong, money has corrupted everything. But in certain cases when you need to compare value between things, the closest thing we have to a common denominator is moolah.
I’d say material results are a pretty good metric.
And how do you compare the results? Can you say definitively that a cure for one disease is more important than another? What metrics do we use? Number of lives affected? Physical pain avoided? Who decides the final say in value? You need a medium to get an approximate value.