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Working in science, I'm always one rejected funding proposal away from becoming a comic book supervillain.
For real though, I don't get why anyone working in science in the 21st century would be anything other than anticapitalist. Or critical of it at the very least. It does nothing but make our lives difficult.
We're all constantly grovelling for funds. Important articles are hidden behind paywalls. We need to pay to get stuff published. And I'm so tired of hearing things like "yes we'd love to hire you, but we don't have any funding right now."
I know this pain all too well. My favorite has been trying to convince a funder of the financial value of species conservation.
@SolanumGF
Ugh. I hate having to think in terms of costs and values. Research just doesn't work that way.
Nope. My other one is when you have a boom year and suddenly the species isn't in decline.
@SolanumGF
Oh gods, that's no better than "it's cold outside today, so global warming must be over."
My current project is one of these and this year might be a boom year so it'll be interesting to see what data we get.
It takes a long time to unlearn the false promises of capitalism. It’s so engrained in the education process that even the most educated have a hard time seeing through it all.
Unfortunately (at least in the US) much non-commercial science funds come from the government, so you’re at their mercy too.
@jbob
I can't speak for the US, but government funding is a double edged sword. On one hand, it's public funding and it's not driven by profit. On the other hand, governments are quite blasé about cutting that funding on a whim.
@InvaderXan Almost as if communism was one of Merton's norms for a reason