>Investing the same money in something that has a known and positive primary effect will produce the same amount of secondary benefits. Except in reality you d

>Investing the same money in something that has a known and positive primary effect will produce the same amount of secondary benefits. Except in reality you don't just get to take something like military money and just invest wherever you want. Military is something that can be funded politically for large sums. So the more likely choice is you get to fund military, with all the associated research and benefits, or you don't get those tax dollars to do anything with, or maybe just spend them on not science. If it were possible to simply pour money into science/invention politically, then the budgets of NIH, NASA, etc., would not be as small as they are.