> A $5 billion project is small enough that it won't affect others,
$5 billion would go a long way to providing shelter, water, fire, and food for the homeless in the United States.
I agree this is a false dichotomy, but also pretty sure dumping money into building houses and hiring every unemployed person at a socially inclusive minimum wage would eliminate both housing and unemployment.
But I also think we have enough resources to both conduct space exploration, house and feed everyone. We can eliminate involuntary unemployment with a couple of keystrokes.
The sum total of all of this would be to stimulate the type of innovation required to transition to a zero carbon emissions economy.
It’s one of those things where the details of the implementation are critical. In the US specifically, large amounts of money have already been put towards these problems to little effect.
To be clear, I staunchly support spending money on these things; clearly, they’re dire needs that should be addressed, but if something isn’t done to increase effectiveness and hold those responsible for the spending accountable, increasing spending is unlikely to move the needle.
Additionally, even if the goal were to reallocate funds, space programs aren’t really the best place to look. The pile of cash that would be yielded by “just” cutting fat in the US military apparatus would likely eclipse that of shutting down NASA altogether.
It's no longer enough to work hard to get into heaven, you need to work hard on something useful for humanity (decided arbitrarily by whomever) to reach eternal life.
Which is frankly hilarious coming from someone who's supposedly "following the Dao".
Priorities.
No. That $5B paid lots of people directly in their salaries, which then got spent in their local economies which then in turn went to construction workers building houses for those employees, the grocers selling the food those people eat, etc. It also went to go buy lots of actual raw materials, which once again employed lots of people and spurred those industries and all the secondary and tertiary spending that happens and what not.
So in a way, that government spending on science is investing in those towns. And ultimately does lead towards more people being able to afford a home, put groceries on the table, etc.
Growing up surrounded by NASA in Clear Lake it was quite obvious to me how important government spending was to the local economy, and how negatively it would affect people if the government decided it wouldn't be worth it to fund it anymore.
How many blue-collar construction workers will do better when NASA gets funding to upgrade their 1960's facilities? Won't it help them afford housing? Won't it help ensure their kids don't go hungry?
Creating a dependent local economy or industry that consumes more than it produces is not an investment, it is welfare.
While government can make investments, not all spending is an investment any more than all the purchases I make are investments.
> An investment is something that provides positive return over time
That's one definition, implying it will just continue to give a return. Like dividends. Another would be "an act of devoting time, effort, or energy to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result." A definition on Wikipedia is "commitment of resources to achieve later benefits". All the spending is investing in knowledge of space, material science, biology, and more, hopefully for a worthwhile result.
One could say, "a student invested a lot of time studying for their sixth-grade math exam". Very much an acceptable statement to make, I don't think most would argue it is improper English. Is that strongly tied to positive productivity and economic exports? Did passing that test directly affect the GDP of the country?
Either way, the people I'm replying to weren't trying to debate the semantic differences between "investing" and "spending", and that wasn't really my main point. I do agree there are differences in this, but that can often be a matter of opinion and perspective.
I would just add the following thoughts. When discussing investment in terms of money, and especially government spending, the connotation is typically positive economic returns.
Similarly, if we are being pedantic, a bad investment is still an investment, as in the case where the returns are less than the cost. I would categorize much of this spending as a bad investment, one that leaves the country worse off in the long run.
I think the word is largely without meaning when used with the subjective definitions outside the economic context. It simply reduces it to "I like this thing". Buying beer is now an investment, because it will have some later "benefits", and I think getting hammered on a Tuesday night is "worthwhile" because I like doing it.
So, the only reason why a city should build a park or a library should solely based on positive economic returns. We should price out how much actual dollar value return the library directly gives to the town this quarter or the playground on the park. How much did adding that swing set really increase property values? I guess we shouldn't have done it. Otherwise, it is purely just wasteful spending.
I would leave you with the following thought. Not everything needs to have an easily measurable economic/financial benefit to be a good thing. Having such a myopic view isn't a positive thing in my opinion. I agree there's still such a thing as waste even in (especially in?) the space programs of the last few decades, but acting like funding space programs in general is a waste because it didn't generate positive economic returns in an easily measurable fashion to be quite a shortsighted viewpoint.
And as mentioned, it's not like the money evaporated. It moved. That money spent is in the communities. It's in the homes there. Its built businesses. Its grown entire cities. People went to college because of that spending. People planted crops because of that spending. That spending kept the velocity of money up instead of having it stagnate under someone's mattress.
I dont think I agree with the velocity of money argument. It wouldnt be stagnating under some mattress. However, that is a much bigger topic that I dont think Im up for today
Sure thing. We don't have to do them in a specific order, there are enough resources to tackle them all at the same time. A $5 billion project is small enough that it won't affect others, but at least someone is doing something about one of those projects.