On Wed, 28 Nov 2001, John Grigg wrote:
> I do see the overall statement you are trying very hard to make. But,
> can extropians at this point really hammer these points home to the
> American people? Pro-Act has yet to even really get off the ground! And
> its funding will be infinitely less than its ideological opponents.
Lets look at R&D funding...
The NIH is at ~$15 Billion/yr, another $15 Billion in Big-Pharma funding,
> $25 Billion/yr in the semiconductor industry, $2 Billion for DARPA,
perhaps $5-10 Billion/yr in VC funding for technology development that
might be considered quite extropic (compared to $50-70 Billion/yr total).
I bet worldwide, the total spending on developments related to an
extropian's core interests is between $100-$150 Billion/yr.
What the "ideological opponents" don't recognize is they have to
stop this juggernaut completely. Technology development is like
climbing a mountain. There many be any number of paths you can take
to get to the top. While the transhumanist "publicity machine" is not
as well developed as theirs -- our core agenda is in much better shape.
As I mentioned to Greg yesterday, a ban on cloning actually *helps*
my current business strategy (a ban on the use of "natural" stem-cells
cloned from an individual would promote the use of "synthetic" stem-cells).
Robert
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