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Re:Obama-Endorsed VC Program Promises 6,000 New Startups by nika on Thursday February 17, 2011 @01:03PM (#2231986)
This is an expression of the broken window fallacy illustrated by Fredric Bastiat (I believe). You see the advantages to your company in the economy as a result of the program, but you do not see the damage to the economy that the program cost. Plus its worth noting that only priviledged groups and politically correct businesses will be getting this money (according to the fact sheet)... so it isn't even going to be allocated based on merit.

Neither of these are evidence of corruption, they are just the nature of both economics and political influence peddling and electioneering.

Re:Obama-Endorsed VC Program Promises 6,000 New Startups by mconnors on Thursday February 17, 2011 @03:13PM (#2232624)
I just don't agree NIH programs "damage the economy" and I've provided concrete examples of how it has done the opposite. Also I am pretty sure any grant writing process is definitely based on merit. We'll have to agree to disagree.
Re:Obama-Endorsed VC Program Promises 6,000 New Startups by anamax on Thursday February 17, 2011 @05:51PM (#2233263)
> I've provided concrete examples of how it has done the opposite.

No, you've merely shown that there were some benefits. You didn't discuss costs at all.

> Also I am pretty sure any grant writing process is definitely based on merit.

"merit" means only that the best proposals were funded. It doesn't tell us whether funding those proposals was a good idea.