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I don't disagree that do-nothing projects can be valuable to society - but defense contractors are an extremely inefficient way to inject money into the economy

by munk-a 7y ago

I don't disagree that do-nothing projects can be valuable to society - but defense contractors are an extremely inefficient way to inject money into the economy. Most of that money ends up going into the pockets of people who could find quite decent jobs elsewhere. Redirecting that money to small business grants would provide a much bigger boost to general societal well being.

Kalium 7y ago
Some of it is less about injecting money than it is about maintaining capacity and capability. It's not always about jobs in general, but sometimes about specific jobs. The US defense-industrial complex may not always have a high need for people who can design stealth fighters, but it definitely prefers to keep a few around in case it does suddenly need them. Small business grants may not be a good way of meeting the same need.
- ska 7y ago
  I suspect there is some truth to this. But I wonder how much of that effort could be directed to more useful infrastructure projects and still maintain skills. The other issue is that some fraction of defense spending seemingly can be viewed as funneling public money into a get-your-friends-rich scheme. I don't think you can find much net upside to that aspect.
  - akiselev 7y ago
    Stealth airplanes are extremely complex engineering projects that stretch across many fields. Maintaining any individual skill set is easy, but they're all highly specialized and require the industry to be maintained or else the combination of cross disciplinary skills, including project management, disappears. Think back to Boeing's problems with the Dreamliner, where Boeing tried a new model of splitting out the design to a bunch of subcontractors and ended up with tons of problems with the integration ranging from missed design milestones due to problems with the composites to miscommunications leading to battery problems in production and so on. Those are a small taste of what happens when the engineering-management hierarchy is broken up and fractured across organizations. It becomes a lot worse when they are fractured across time. The US famously lost it's top launch capabilities with the Saturn V and we didn't have a domestic replacement until the Falcon Heavy in 2018! By their very nature, maintaining the capabilities needed for weapons of war that can be deployed anywhere in the world is even more expensive if you want to have any sort of certainty that they'll work when the shots are fired instead of once a few years when you want to launch a satellite.
    - ska 7y ago
      I don’t think we are disagreeing, but I wouldn’t rely on the industry to define how much is needed.
      - akiselev 7y ago
        I'm saying that the resources cannot be redirect towards "more useful infrastructure projects and still maintain skills". The cross disciplinary skills in military aviation are unique. Whether or not the cost of the F35 program is an efficient way to maintain those skills is a different issue altogether that gets at the fundamental structure of our government and how money impacts politics. That's a much more difficult discussion than "can we reasonably defend ourselves in the future."
        ska 7y ago
        sure, but it’s the more interesting discussion to have, and it’s what I was pointing out. Plausibly the majority of the resources spent on this program could in fact have gone to more useful programs without affecting baseline capability. Plausibly the could not ... but it’s not clear anyone who should be asking that question, is.
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  I get maintaining the capability, but they clearly can't develop a stealth fighter, so that justification doesn't really work either anymore.
  - Kalium 7y ago
    I mean, maybe? That this program isn't working may not be the same as the US no longer having the capability. It's possible that the F-35 isn't really expected to produce a functional stealth fighter, all rhetoric aside. I honestly have no idea.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      That seems to stretch the argument pretty far - maybe if we just want to keep vaguely military folk in the country then we could employ them building military grade roads to replace the aging infrastructure. If the project they're actually working on isn't supposed to bear any real fruit then maybe just redirect them to something that isn't a complete waste of resources. Also, I disagree, I don't think anyone in that realm of government would knowingly sink that much money into a project they intended to fail - they might be overly optimistic about the success, they might be trying to funnel money into their retirement but it takes clout to secure a budget like that and people had to work hard to secure it initially and keep it going - so a failure is probably going to fall under one of these categories - un-achievable, poorly managed, or wholly corrupt.
raisedbyninjas 7y ago
In these times of low unemployment, a dearth of applicants may push Lockheed to literally burning money. Could this provide more economic benefit until spring when heating costs drop?
WalterBright 7y ago
> inject money into the economy The money "injected" into the economy must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the economy. I.e. it's zero-sum.
- myhf 7y ago
  It's not zero-sum. It can change the velocity of circulation money, which impacts economic activity in predictable ways.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    This implies that the money extracted from the economy is dead money or poorly invested. I've seen no rationale nor evidence for why that might be true.
  - csb6 7y ago
    Circulating money doesn’t create economic value. We might as well had spent $1.5 trillion (the cost so far to develop the F-35) to make a fleet of large metal platypuses which we keep in hangars and occasionally launch into the air. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
    - sitkack 7y ago
      Could they please be chrome?
      - csb6 7y ago
        I like the aesthetic, but we’re on a budget here. Rhinestone and we call it a compromise?
    - neximo64 7y ago
      Circulating money does create economic value in far multiples of the initial amount. It's well established military spending has an impact on GDP far more than the amount itself. Funds are never 'spent' as such, the money always circulates around even if you do buy metal platypuses - someone is going to get a salary and spend it somewhere or invest in their future by buying things that improve their productivity.

by munk-a 7y ago

Kalium 7y ago

Some of it is less about injecting money than it is about maintaining capacity and capability. It's not always about jobs in general, but sometimes about specific jobs. The US defense-industrial complex may not always have a high need for people who can design stealth fighters, but it definitely prefers to keep a few around in case it does suddenly need them. Small business grants may not be a good way of meeting the same need.

ska 7y ago
I suspect there is some truth to this. But I wonder how much of that effort could be directed to more useful infrastructure projects and still maintain skills. The other issue is that some fraction of defense spending seemingly can be viewed as funneling public money into a get-your-friends-rich scheme. I don't think you can find much net upside to that aspect.
- akiselev 7y ago
  Stealth airplanes are extremely complex engineering projects that stretch across many fields. Maintaining any individual skill set is easy, but they're all highly specialized and require the industry to be maintained or else the combination of cross disciplinary skills, including project management, disappears. Think back to Boeing's problems with the Dreamliner, where Boeing tried a new model of splitting out the design to a bunch of subcontractors and ended up with tons of problems with the integration ranging from missed design milestones due to problems with the composites to miscommunications leading to battery problems in production and so on. Those are a small taste of what happens when the engineering-management hierarchy is broken up and fractured across organizations. It becomes a lot worse when they are fractured across time. The US famously lost it's top launch capabilities with the Saturn V and we didn't have a domestic replacement until the Falcon Heavy in 2018! By their very nature, maintaining the capabilities needed for weapons of war that can be deployed anywhere in the world is even more expensive if you want to have any sort of certainty that they'll work when the shots are fired instead of once a few years when you want to launch a satellite.
  - ska 7y ago
    I don’t think we are disagreeing, but I wouldn’t rely on the industry to define how much is needed.
    - akiselev 7y ago
      I'm saying that the resources cannot be redirect towards "more useful infrastructure projects and still maintain skills". The cross disciplinary skills in military aviation are unique. Whether or not the cost of the F35 program is an efficient way to maintain those skills is a different issue altogether that gets at the fundamental structure of our government and how money impacts politics. That's a much more difficult discussion than "can we reasonably defend ourselves in the future."
      - ska 7y ago
        sure, but it’s the more interesting discussion to have, and it’s what I was pointing out. Plausibly the majority of the resources spent on this program could in fact have gone to more useful programs without affecting baseline capability. Plausibly the could not ... but it’s not clear anyone who should be asking that question, is.
andrewflnr 7y ago
I get maintaining the capability, but they clearly can't develop a stealth fighter, so that justification doesn't really work either anymore.
- Kalium 7y ago
  I mean, maybe? That this program isn't working may not be the same as the US no longer having the capability. It's possible that the F-35 isn't really expected to produce a functional stealth fighter, all rhetoric aside. I honestly have no idea.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    That seems to stretch the argument pretty far - maybe if we just want to keep vaguely military folk in the country then we could employ them building military grade roads to replace the aging infrastructure. If the project they're actually working on isn't supposed to bear any real fruit then maybe just redirect them to something that isn't a complete waste of resources. Also, I disagree, I don't think anyone in that realm of government would knowingly sink that much money into a project they intended to fail - they might be overly optimistic about the success, they might be trying to funnel money into their retirement but it takes clout to secure a budget like that and people had to work hard to secure it initially and keep it going - so a failure is probably going to fall under one of these categories - un-achievable, poorly managed, or wholly corrupt.

raisedbyninjas 7y ago

In these times of low unemployment, a dearth of applicants may push Lockheed to literally burning money. Could this provide more economic benefit until spring when heating costs drop?

WalterBright 7y ago

> inject money into the economy The money "injected" into the economy must come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the economy. I.e. it's zero-sum.

myhf 7y ago
It's not zero-sum. It can change the velocity of circulation money, which impacts economic activity in predictable ways.
- WalterBright 7y ago
  This implies that the money extracted from the economy is dead money or poorly invested. I've seen no rationale nor evidence for why that might be true.
- csb6 7y ago
  Circulating money doesn’t create economic value. We might as well had spent $1.5 trillion (the cost so far to develop the F-35) to make a fleet of large metal platypuses which we keep in hangars and occasionally launch into the air. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
  - sitkack 7y ago
    Could they please be chrome?
    - csb6 7y ago
      I like the aesthetic, but we’re on a budget here. Rhinestone and we call it a compromise?
  - neximo64 7y ago
    Circulating money does create economic value in far multiples of the initial amount. It's well established military spending has an impact on GDP far more than the amount itself. Funds are never 'spent' as such, the money always circulates around even if you do buy metal platypuses - someone is going to get a salary and spend it somewhere or invest in their future by buying things that improve their productivity.