Greatest Achievements of Public Policy

[RubberToe]

Environment; Creation of the Environmental Protection Agency

EPA History | US EPA

This probably goes without saying, but you wouldn't want to be living in the alternate history where this agency wasn't created.

RT

 

[nwdiver]

17) Infrastructure; "To establish Post Offices and Post Roads"

Because we didn't always have UPS, FedEx, Amazon Prime or even email.

I'm always amused talking to libertarians. There're fine getting rid of a lot of the agency's we ACTUALLY need... if they remember them...

But not the Postal Service! That's in the constitution!

 

[RubberToe]

Exploration; National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The exploration of the solar system since 1970 is essentially courtesy of NASA. Without this inspiration, Elon Musk might have ended up as a very accomplished accountant.

RT

 

[RubberToe]

Science; Detecting Gravitational Waves

IMO LIGO is one of the most amazing machines we built in the past decade. When Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves he thought they would be impossible to detect. Very challenging... but not impossible. The sensitivity required to detect even the relatively 'MASSIVE' ripples caused by the collision of two black holes is astounding. Each arm of LIGO is 4km and must be able to detect a variation in length 1:10k the width of a proton. The success of LIGO already has engineers planning the next phase in gravitational astronomy. Placing satellites in orbit able to measure even fainter ripples in space-time.

Thank you NSF for providing the ~$400M in federal funds that made this discovery possible.

One of my favorite LIGO stories I tell to put people asleep at dinner parties is that between 2002 and 2010 it didn't detect any gravitational waves. Instead of calling it quits, they made it 10 times more sensitive and Bingo!

Not sure that would happen now...

Facts | LIGO Lab | Caltech

And the latest set of upgrades kicks the sensitivity up another 40%

News | LIGO and Virgo Resume Search for Ripples in Space and Time | LIGO Lab | Caltech

RT

 

[nwdiver]

Exploration; National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The exploration of the solar system since 1970 is essentially courtesy of NASA. Without this inspiration, Elon Musk might have ended up as a very accomplished accountant.

RT

Very true; It's amazing how many private sector achievements grew in fertile ground laid down by a government program.

 

[RubberToe]

Communication Networks; ARPANET

Internet History Timeline: ARPANET to the World Wide Web | Live Science

No brainer. Without this government funded effort, we would all still be sitting around talking to each other.

RT

 

[RubberToe]

Science; CRISPR

Not sure if this was government funded or not. But being able to play God surely deserves a mention. Pandora's box is open for business...

Addgene: CRISPR History and Development for Genome Engineering

Looks like it is now at least

NIH to launch genome editing research program

 

[RubberToe]

Chemistry; Lithium Ion Battery

Lithium-Ion Battery Creators Win Chemistry Nobel Prize

Maybe funding from Oxford University

John B. Goodenough - Wikipedia

 

[nwdiver]

22) Public Safety; Weather Forecasts

This article from Faux News is emblematic of the problem...

Do we really need the NWS?

Um... where do they think 'The Weather Channel' and 'AccuWeather' get the data they use to make their forecasts?

John Oliver did a great segment on this. Be warned... this is unedited HBO.

 

[nwdiver]

23) Infrastructure; Time-Keeping

Thought this was appropriate for New Years. How else would we know EXACTLY when 2020 began if not for the US Naval Observatory?

 

[David_Cary]

Should we have a parallel thread about all the things that government messed up? Or just include it here?

Zoning laws and interstate highway program that has led to suburban sprawl and an over reliance on personal transportation.

Subsidizing corn and the thus encouraging the development of high fructose corn syrup.

Most nutritional advice given in the last 50 years loaded with influence from special interest groups.

CAFE legislation that encouraged automakers to market SUVs to get around the regulations.

$686 billion in military spending for 2019

Just to give the libertarian side also, how much of this has occurred in the last 50 years? Sure some of the tech stuff is fairly recent but also arguably not 100% dependent on government for development. And when you confiscate 20% of economic output, you better have something to show for it.

Preaching to the choir about how great government is only has so much value. Pretending that the majority is willing to pay more taxes doesn't really help. I can't tell you how many liberals I know that spend a lot of energy avoiding taxation and drive diesels and SUVs. And when I say lot of energy - I mean things like moving to low tax states.

 

[nwdiver]

Should we have a parallel thread about all the things that government messed up? Or just include it here?

Zoning laws and interstate highway program that has led to suburban sprawl and an over reliance on personal transportation.

Subsidizing corn and the thus encouraging the development of high fructose corn syrup.

Most nutritional advice given in the last 50 years loaded with influence from special interest groups.

CAFE legislation that encouraged automakers to market SUVs to get around the regulations.

$686 billion in military spending for 2019

Just to give the libertarian side also, how much of this has occurred in the last 50 years? Sure some of the tech stuff is fairly recent but also arguably not 100% dependent on government for development. And when you confiscate 20% of economic output, you better have something to show for it.

Preaching to the choir about how great government is only has so much value. Pretending that the majority is willing to pay more taxes doesn't really help. I can't tell you how many liberals I know that spend a lot of energy avoiding taxation and drive diesels and SUVs. And when I say lot of energy - I mean things like moving to low tax states.

Ok; Do you believe those problems to be so intractable that they cannot be solved specifically? You believe them to be so terrible that the system itself should be diminished removing much of the good that it does? I'm not claiming that government is perfect. I'm pointing out that the solution to a flaw is fixing that specific flaw... not making the entire thing smaller. We need smarter government not necessarily smaller government. If your car gets a flat tire do you give up on cars and buy a horse? Or... or just fix the flat tire?

My point with this thread is that the bulk of what the government does goes on in the background without anyone ever noticing or knowing. Look at the clip with Rick Perry. Either he was pandering to his base and reinforcing the idea that the DOE is useless or he honestly had no clue what it does. Not sure which is worse. Then POTUS who also has no respect for public service (He altered a NWS hurricane track violating US title code 18) thought it would be amusing to put the guy that couldn't remember an agency in charge of that agency......

 

[nwdiver]

23.5) Synchronous Time-Keeping

I didn't think this deserved it's own since it's pretty minor, the utilities mostly took it upon themselves to do it and FERC didn't make it mandatory until ~2009... which is WAAAY late. But I thought this was interested when I learned about it.

The regulation was repealed in 2017 'cause it really doesn't make sense to burn energy changing grid frequency to make clocks no one uses as their go-to time piece more accurate. Would have made sense 50 years ago though.

But here's the story;

Running Late? It could be the power grids fault.

 

[nwdiver]

24) Science & Public Health; The Human Genome Project

The National Institutes of Health is another 'obscure' federal agency. In 1990 the NIH began funding the effort to decode all the base pairs that make up DNA. The project was completed 13 years later in 2003.

 

[nwdiver]

25) Public Health; Keeping Thalidomide out of the US market

I can't think of a starker example of the need for independent regulation nor an instance where the system worked pretty much exactly as it should.

Thalidomide was developed and initially marketed in Germany as a mild sedative and regularly prescribed to pregnant women to ease morning sickness. In 1960 an application was submitted to the US FDA to make the drug available in the US. Despite Thalidomide already being approved for sale in Canada and 20 other countries as well as significant pressure from the manufacturer the application was rejected by the FDA pharmacologist assigned to the case Frances Oldham Kelsey due to lack of sufficient clinical trials.

By 1961 there was overwhelming evidence that Thalidomide had caused tens of thousands of severe birth defects. The FDA blocking this drug from the US market spared thousands of children from living with profound disabilities and far more lives.

 

[nwdiver]

26) Culture; The Library of Congress

Does that remind anyone else of the Citadel in GOT?

 

[nwdiver]

27) Environment; Moratorium on Whaling*

The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is an international body set up by the terms of the International convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) which was signed into law in 1946 to preserve whaling stocks. Harvest of various species such as the Blue Whale were banned then 1982 a moratorium was adopted due to declining stocks and public pressure. Whaling is still permitted for subsistence gathering and 'research' even though that 'research' is often researching how many whales can be captured....

It's still sickening how much damage was done and many populations are still struggling to recover. It's estimate that 99% of all Blue Whales were harvested reducing their population from >300,000 to <10,000.

 

[S'toon]

There's public science in every single new drug. That was the surprising answer to a U.S. senator's question about how government-funded research is benefitting citizens. But it took a year to come up with the numbers.


It all started last June when Bentley University professor Fred Ledley and his colleagues in Massachusetts were watching a senate budget hearing that was considering cutting the budget of the National Institutes of Health, the major medical science funding agency in the U.S.


When NIH director Francis Collins was asked how publicly-funded science was leading to new drugs, he couldn't give a detailed answer. That's when Ledley realized there was a data gap. Ledley also knew that with modern data mining tools his team could finally answer that question.


"This couldn't have been done five years ago," Ledley told CBC News.


Using vast cloud computing capacity, Ledley and team designed a system to scan more than two million scientific publications for known drug targets. Then they scoured every government research grant awarded by the NIH since 1985.

In the end they were able to identify which of the 210 new drugs approved since 2010 had publicly funded science behind it.


The answer? All of them.

<snip>
Full article at:
How many new drugs rely on government-funded science? All of them

 

[nwdiver]

29) Environment & Technology; Renewable resource maps and calculators

Can't believe I didn't think of this earlier since I use it so often.

PV Watts

I love all our National Labs but I especially love NREL

 

[nwdiver]

30) Environment; Game Management

Even in red states poaching is one of the few environmentally harmful activities they usually agree on. Even if they forget who sets the quotas and who enforces them...