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Say the member countries have 500 million people in a population. In order for them to spend 20 billion on LHC, you would need to tax those people ~$40. My intu

by cheez 8y ago

Say the member countries have 500 million people in a population. In order for them to spend 20 billion on LHC, you would need to tax those people ~$40. My intuition is that people would be willing to pay that to understand that some theory is correct or incorrect. Even proving gravity waves could not be done for 100 years after the theory.

forgotmypass2 8y ago
> My intuition is that people would be willing to pay that to understand that some theory is correct or incorrect. When doing this sort of calculations, you have to take into account that you're taxing THE WHOLE population: completely destitute people, people near the poverty line, children who ear exactly $0, etc. For some of these poeple, $40 can be way too much. In practice, if you tax a child that doesn't earn an income, you're taxing the parents. Of course it's possible that on average you can tax $40 from each person, but that might require taxing $400 from some people and $0 from other people. That said, there might be better ways of spending that money than on this.
- jandrese 8y ago
  > That said, there might be better ways of spending that money than on this. True, but there are also much worse ways you could spend this money, like building a useless wall to throw out a completely random example.
aggie 8y ago
You're not actually addressing the merits of the proposal, just reframing the terms of the cost. Why not spend that $40 per person on something with better prospects?
mabbo 8y ago
It's not about the cost, it's about the benefit. The author is arguing that the proposals for what to do with a super-LHC aren't very good and that's why it shouldn't be done. So let's indeed spend the $20B- but spend it on 20 other $1B programs that will each provide better results and answers than what we'll get from poor theories that a $20B project can answer.

by cheez 8y ago

forgotmypass2 8y ago

> My intuition is that people would be willing to pay that to understand that some theory is correct or incorrect. When doing this sort of calculations, you have to take into account that you're taxing THE WHOLE population: completely destitute people, people near the poverty line, children who ear exactly $0, etc. For some of these poeple, $40 can be way too much. In practice, if you tax a child that doesn't earn an income, you're taxing the parents. Of course it's possible that on average you can tax $40 from each person, but that might require taxing $400 from some people and $0 from other people. That said, there might be better ways of spending that money than on this.

jandrese 8y ago
> That said, there might be better ways of spending that money than on this. True, but there are also much worse ways you could spend this money, like building a useless wall to throw out a completely random example.

aggie 8y ago

You're not actually addressing the merits of the proposal, just reframing the terms of the cost. Why not spend that $40 per person on something with better prospects?

mabbo 8y ago

It's not about the cost, it's about the benefit. The author is arguing that the proposals for what to do with a super-LHC aren't very good and that's why it shouldn't be done. So let's indeed spend the $20B- but spend it on 20 other $1B programs that will each provide better results and answers than what we'll get from poor theories that a $20B project can answer.