2 ms·

This is a common response here and elsewhere. Generally every state allocation of funds is presented as incredibly vital. This is exactly the attitude I was spe

This is a common response here and elsewhere. Generally every state allocation of funds is presented as incredibly vital. This is exactly the attitude I was speaking to in my comment above. It would be rare to find a spending program which the proponents didn't claim was incredibly valuable. Here on HN we have an interest in technology. It fits that we value some of the discoveries of NASA. Down thread, you'll find others suggesting that defense spending should be cut. It isn't hard to imagine nor would you need to look far to find a hawkish interventionist. These communities will assure us that defense spending is vital, absolutely vital not only to our own well-being, but to support the globalized trading system as well. Choose a topic. Pick a niche. Under every rock from K Street to Capitol Hill, you will find a bureaucrat, politician or lobbyist to justify more spending. Some may like to spend more here and less there. Others might like to spend more everywhere. Almost all of them will have particular issues for which spending cuts are beyond consideration. >...research that had wound up beneficial in the long run indirectly due to incidental discoveries and unexpected connections. This is a good point. What is missing here, are the missed opportunities in the private sector, which would have also been, unexpected. We don't know the things which were not built. We do not know what all of those scientists and engineers may have discovered or built, had they not been allocated into government funded research. For me, this is a problem with the post-hoc rationalizations.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago
> Generally every state allocation of funds is presented as incredibly vital It’s quite likely that many of them are actually vital, with long term costs outstripping short term savings from cuts to an enormous degree. Nobody is doing the math to figure this out, though. The cuts aren’t calculated, but instead wide and largely blind. Some kind of major fallout is unavoidable when operating in such a manner. In reality the deepest savings to be had are probably in doing things like cracking down on endless chains of government subcontracting, ousting the numerous middlemen pocketing money the whole way, and cutting places where excess clearly leads to little or no return. That’s a lot of work and takes time, effort, and expertise and doesn’t make a voterbase-placating big media splash though, and so there’s no chance of that happening.

cosmic_cheese 1y ago

> Generally every state allocation of funds is presented as incredibly vital It’s quite likely that many of them are actually vital, with long term costs outstripping short term savings from cuts to an enormous degree. Nobody is doing the math to figure this out, though. The cuts aren’t calculated, but instead wide and largely blind. Some kind of major fallout is unavoidable when operating in such a manner. In reality the deepest savings to be had are probably in doing things like cracking down on endless chains of government subcontracting, ousting the numerous middlemen pocketing money the whole way, and cutting places where excess clearly leads to little or no return. That’s a lot of work and takes time, effort, and expertise and doesn’t make a voterbase-placating big media splash though, and so there’s no chance of that happening.