I think the point of the Oculus Rifts and Water Jetpack and Martian Terrorist Proofing is that once you've said, "oh, we'll try to help out only those people wh

I think the point of the Oculus Rifts and Water Jetpack and Martian Terrorist Proofing is that once you've said, "oh, we'll try to help out only those people who need it," you've invited a political process into the system. That's dangerous because the politicians who are making the decision are not, in fact, experts in the matter. (See also: NASA explosions. They happen when the people who make decisions are managers, not the engineers who know the most about the systems.) Politicians will divert tons of your funds to programs which address "related problems" that are not actually current problems (Martian terrorists), monolithic solutions that are not known to work (jetpacks), and to other programs which get nerfed. A good example of a program getting nerfed: there's a nice free-and-reduced-cost lunch program for kids in the US: poor kids should be able to get a good meal at school. Unfortunately, this program has completely lost its ability to provide poor kids with a high-calorie meal, because of Mrs. Obama's crusade against obesity. It's not that the First Lady's plan is unilaterally bad, but rather that it is bad if this meal is the only substantial meal that you're going to get, so that fighting malnutrition is the same as providing lots of calories.