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> How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a good thing in and of itself? Well, I didn't say that it is, I just argued that it
by jlgreco 13y ago
> How is consuming billions of dollars of the time of talented specialists a good thing in and of itself?
Well, I didn't say that it is, I just argued that it wasn't a negative thing. Wealth was not destroyed or sent away to some far off land, just shuffled around within the same country.
I will say that it is now though: One of India's greatest assets is their production of quality engineers and scientists. The more money they can dump into engineering and scientific endeavors, the better. Unlike breaking windows and then replacing them with identical windows, programs such as these actually create something: experience and expertise.
In evoking the broken windows parable, you are mistaking a rocket for a window. Space programs do not destroy wealth to move money around. Perhaps if we senselessly knocked down a few buildings every time we built a rocket, you might have a point; space programs aren't "cash for clunkers", we aren't destroying wealth (old cars) to encourage the exchange of money (buying new cars).
- fspeech 13y agoOpportunity cost is the equivalence of wealth lost.
- jlgreco 13y agoThe opportunity cost of giving money to the ISRO is lower than what they would have done with that money otherwise. Money sent to the ISRO is an investment in India's domestic STEM talent. There are few better ways they could have possibly spent that money.
- mikeash 13y agoWealth was destroyed and sent to some far off land, specifically to space and to Mars. The wealth is not the money, it's the spacecraft. The return may well be worth the cost, but it's wrong to say that wealth was simply moved around within India. Money was moved around within India. Wealth was concentrated into a small package and then blasted into space, never to be seen again.
- jlgreco 13y ago"the vast majority of money spent on space exploration is spent on earth." The wealth, or money, represented by the physical spacecraft is a rounding error. The thing isn't made of gold bullion. Wealth was used to develop and exercise engineering talent. Wealth was converted into talent, not a spacecraft. Those engineers were not sent to mars, some largely inconsequential piece of metal was. The wealth remains on earth, in India. If I spend money to take a bunch of CS classes at community college, then at the end of that do `rm -rf ~/files/school/cs`, did I just delete wealth? Of course not. The wealth was not concentrated into that directory, it was not lost or destroyed when I sent it off into oblivion.
- auctiontheory 13y agodid I just delete wealth? Of course not. Exactly. Because you were well-trained to protect yourself with aliases. Now if you'd done '\rm <etc.>', it would be another story.
- jlgreco 13y agoWho uses aliases to prevent the deletion of directories? The directory of source code created during my education is not something that wealth was poured into. Wealth was poured into my brain, that directory is just a byproduct. If I, and all of those engineers, technicians, and scientists, gave ourselves brain-damage, then and only then would all of that wealth be destroyed.
- quinnchr 13y agoWell, you could argue the labor theory of value, and since that directory consumed your labor it theoretically has value. Does it have value to anyone but you? Probably not.
- jlgreco 13y agoIt would have some value to me, but not much in the grand scheme of things. I don't look at that directory and think "Welp, that was [X]-grand well spent", because just getting that directory wasn't worth many thousands of dollars to me. That's not where the wealth represented by all of those thousands of dollars went, so the wealth represented by all of those thousands of dollars cannot be destroyed by deleting it.