Comment by randallsquared
6 days ago
This is a typical argument for state intervention in the marketplace, but it is weaker if one makes different assumptions about the state of the market absent the intervention. In order to show that it was money well spent, you'd have to show that it's better to have more groups digging, and that there wouldn't have been enough diggers without GovDitch.
Well, also that spending on needless digging would have been the best use of the resources. Instead of spending on something more immediately useful (or leaving the money with the taxpayers).
There's really many, many more lower-hanging fruits in tax spend even in science funding alone, that's significantly more of a "waste of resources" than manned space program, and drastically more so in tax spending in general. Why not focus on those more, instead of attacking one of the few remaining things where people still try to do something ambitious, constructive, and forward-looking, and one that has a hugely disproportionate and positive impact on promoting interest in science and engineering?
But I've already noticed that some people think sportsball and adtech salaries are enough to build society's mythos around, so whatever.