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In an ideal world, government would invest in many more low-probability/high-impact engineering projects. But this doesn't align well with political incentives
by mlinsey 7y ago
In an ideal world, government would invest in many more low-probability/high-impact engineering projects. But this doesn't align well with political incentives - 100M on a bet that will return 50X 10% of the time is great for a private investor, but a politician won't get 50X the votes from a successful project as an unsuccessful one, instead there's a 90% chance the project will be portrayed as a boondoggle.
- EpicEng 7y agoAlso, those relatively small investments of $100M will add up to a lot over time. At some point people are going to get a bit sour on the idea of acting like an angle investor with tax dollars.
- perl4ever 7y agoThe problem with investing in a lot of low probability things is that when, say, 100 of them all fail, how do you know whether that's because they were low probability, or zero probability? Unfortunately, there's no limit to the number of very low probability things you can invest in, so nobody has the budget for them all.
- dnautics 7y agoit's also not ideal for government to make those sorts of bets, because they is no reasonable incentive structure for the government to 1) find the talent to make correct bets about those sorts of things and 2) to be accountable in case the person making those bets is just an garden variety idiot, or, worse, taking the government for a ride.