I agree the main point of this. An important economic point that is often ignored is that anytime you take money by force and spend it on some grand project the

I agree the main point of this. An important economic point that is often ignored is that anytime you take money by force and spend it on some grand project the gains or benefits to individuals has to be less than the costs, otherwise it could be done voluntarily. The net effect of these projects is to invest in technology or create things that the society either cannot really afford or for which there is insufficient demand at the time. It is true some technology may come sooner than what otherwise would have been the case but that just highlights the economic fallacy involved, and you can't point to what was not developed to prove the case because the resources went into the Apollo project or whatever, one can only understand it via principles. This is true regardless of the generally acknowledged inefficiencies of gov't projects, which only makes matters worse.