What is more profitable: creating problems or solving them?

In the private sector, no one pays you to create a problem.   The public sector is different.  As an example, the New York Times quotes (hat tip: Instapundit) Prof. Carl Hart of Columbia University on the nature of government-sponsored research into illegal drug usage:

“Eighty to 90 percent of people are not negatively affected by drugs, but in the scientific literature nearly 100 percent of the reports are negative,” Dr. Hart said. “There’s a skewed focus on pathology. We scientists know that we get more money if we keep telling Congress that we’re solving this terrible problem. We’ve played a less than honorable role in the war on drugs.”[Emph. added]

"Green energy" and global warming research have a similar bias: the more "terrible" the problem is claimed to be, the more funding that will be allocated for it.

We could solve a lot of 'problems' if we simply reduced the funding for them.

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