I'm sure there are many physicists that share your opinions, but that's not really relevant - there are also many physicists that share the opposite opinion, an

I'm sure there are many physicists that share your opinions, but that's not really relevant - there are also many physicists that share the opposite opinion, and there's a lot of physicists that aren't knowledgeable on budgetary issues. Without actual studies, anecdotal support isn't a good way to form consensus - otherwise we'd have to accept that the world is flat, hollow, and 6000 years old. Your approval as a citizen sadly doesn't mean much - the EU is not a direct democracy, and I haven't come across data showing that this issue would influence elections in a meaningful way (please share any you should find!). The representative nature of our shared democracy can often be frustrating, but as a fellow citizen you'll have to convince me that it should turn into such an issue when I vote the next time, however the way you're assigning negative intentions without providing examples of better investments doesn't convince me that you're treating the subject in an objective way. > And there are many other at least as good theories of what dark matter could be that are also well outside this range. So, ruling out some models, ones that we anyway don't have any particular reason to believe are the best models, is in fact almost useless. Have you read studies that analyze existing theories regarding "discoverability" (for lack of a better term)? Or how did you arrive at "almost useless"? It's hard for me to know if the likelihood is closer to 0.0000000001% or 1%, and at least some analysis on this should be doable, even if just by counting the raw amount of possibly achievable/non-achievable theories. > I know less about the others to understand whether they are as much bullshit or not. And even if they all are, this doesn't mean there is 0 RoI. But I also don't thing the RoI is as high as in other, less well studied areas of physics. Okay, and what are those areas? What would the required investments be for what kind of RoI? > As for the engineering advances, the problem with that line of argument is always the same: if buidling the FCC has minor value, but will have positive side-effects of improving our ability to build X, then investing directly in X would be even better. Only if the expected RoI of the FCC is lower than the additional RoI of investing in X. I'm open to this being the case, but since both of us aren't physicists (and probably not knowledgeable in these kinds of budgetary questions), I need more than your word.