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Yepp. The only money that might "cost" something, to a nation state, is money that leaves it.
by groestl 3y ago
Yepp. The only money that might "cost" something, to a nation state, is money that leaves it.
- mminer237 3y agoA country spending money employing people to do unproductive work reduces the amount of useful work its populace can do. On paper you keep all the money, but no value is created.
- groestl 3y agoThere's opportunity cost, that's true, and I'm sure one can show that the most optimal situation in this case would be everyone on the world using the same office suite (i.e. free trade is optimal), _provided_ non-US countries would spend the money on actual production cost. However, the money paid is not only for production, but also for rent seeking, squeezing value out of a quasi-monopoly. That is actual money lost for unproductive work, _and_ it is going outside of Germany.