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Their point was fairly straightforward. Don't know why you are mischaracterizing it. They just said that it was weird that state driven budgets are used for splurging on a party, rather than using it purely for the "conference" part, i.e lunch+conference hall+utilities+special guest fees.

Prophylactically responding to your sure-to-come bad faith response, I'm not saying parties should be banned at conferences. If all involved want to indulge, a private sponsor could always fund it.

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It is not the least bit established that state driven budgets are paying for this, that wasn't even in the comment. So making that assumption is not merited, much less telling me I should be taking it as evidence.

> Prophylactically responding to your sure-to-come bad faith response,

That you think this is a bad-faith response is a weird way to put it.

I certainly don't want to pay for all the sales kickoff parties and conferences that the employees of my software vendors pay for, yet I still am forced to. Should we run the government like a business, where the benefits of exchange of information is permitted, or should that only be allowed from paid sponsors?

There is a lot of bad faith in this thread but it's odd you should place it on me.

> I certainly don't want to pay for all the sales kickoff parties and conferences that the employees of my software vendors pay for, yet I still am forced to.

Yes, there is a difference between the way you treat government grants versus private voluntary sponsors. Such splurging of others money is bad. That private companies do it is unavoidable and impossible to mitigate. But you can definitely try to avoid it with government money.

> Benefits of exchange of information

You can sugarcoat "parties" how much ever you want, it remains a fact that it is not a necessary aspect of the conference.