Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Capitalism Is RUINING Science" video.

  1. Well, Lorentz...maybe a few others. Maxwell? Michaelson and Morley? Do you actually have the answer?
    3
  2. The guest is talking about the advent and proliferation of accountability metrics in academic science as a byproduct of the profit motive encouraging universities to behave less like institutions of higher learning and research and more like businesses. You can't just read the title of the video. If you actually watch the video it's clear that "capitalism" is being used here as a synecdoche for those metrics or for a kind of capitalist logic of rewards. That development is rather new. There was nothing like it in the 20th or 19th centuries. Capitalism did a lot to spur the development of science. It allowed for the concentration of wealth, which could then be funneled into different projects, and it created the conditions for the rapid development of technology, without which many scientific advancements would have been possible. And let's not forget that it also created the conditions for massive, mechanized warfare, which perhaps more than anything else has jumpstarted scientific and technological progress—with government funding. But to say that science operated according to the logic of capitalism during that whole period seems to me misguided. Certainly there are many ways in which the kinds of questions that were explored and discoveries made reflected the broader socio-political landscape; but the actual method of funding and conducting these endeavors varied quite a lot, from independently funded experiments to patronage systems to government funding and to corporate research. Another thing worth considering are the huge changes in patent and IP laws over the past 200 years.
    2
  3. "The observation I make is that the university existed before capitalism." 00:55
    2
  4. "right = anarchy ... I'm libertarian." Looks like someone needs to look up what words mean.
    2
  5. If only there were SOME outlet where one could find bland, neutral, balanced news that ultimately only succeeds in reproducing the dominant ideology.
    1
  6. "Men of that description [professors who lecture on the merits of liberalism] should either relinquish their tenets or their places; for, is there not a gross inconsistency in their eating the King's bread, and at the same time vilifying his Government?" - anonymous, Glasgow Courier, 1793 Stupid retort then; stupid retort now.
    1