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Comment by hopefulengineer | Hacker News Reader

1. US military is only 16-18% of federal spending. Entitlements like social security, medicaid, and welfare make up 65-70% of federal spending. The majority of military spending is on salaries and benefits anyway, it's essentially a welfare program itself

>delivers the least

2. most major advancements in tech and healthcare are due to the military. Silicon Valley was built on military spending. Self driving cars were initially funded by DARPA. AI was funded by military. If you have a job in the tech industry you can thank the US military

There's also the minor detail of the US navy making global trade possible and the strength of the US military making traditional war pointless which has resulted in the last few decades being the most peaceful in human history in terms of probability of dying in combat

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> 2. most major advancements in tech and healthcare are due to the military.

Can you back that up? That military spending has been high gives no guarantee that having spent the same money in the private sector wouldn't have led to even better results and advancements.

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

The military spends on R&D where it makes zero business sense for a for-profit company to spend. Private companies must be profitable.

Still, the question remains: Can we say a priori that the funds for R&D military spending wouldn't have been spent better by the private sector?

private sector doesnt do basic research and has a short view of things because of the drive towards profitability.

gov't-funded R&D is why we have nice things. everyone strategically forgets that silicon valley exists because of bottomless cold war spending, so silicon valley's obsession with the superiority of the private sector is ever ironic

Honestly, no.

The private sector is generally very, very heavy on short-termism. Even when companies do have internal long-term research initiatives, there is often a strong aversion to pursuing research that could cannibalize high-margin products.

Unequivocally, no, the reasons are stated in the post you're replying to.

Which private, for profit, company would spend five (5) billion dollars (unadjusted for inflation) to launch GPS satellites into space and then allow their unlimited use free of cost to anyone in the world who has a receiver? That cost doesn't even account for ongoing maintenance.

Maybe no company would do exactly that, but that is irrelevant. Companies would do other things with that money. Maybe they would have cured some disease instead. Maybe they would have found another breakthrough technology. Who knows.

And there is nothing free about using those satellites. Tax payers pay for their launch and subsequent maintenance and running costs.

From an economics point of view, an unnecessary job is inefficient not because it gives people money (they can spend it efficiently on themselves), but because it wastes people's time when they could be doing something else. (Not to mention other wasted resources.)

Social security is efficient because it doesn't have this problem.

There are two sorts of efficiency percentage and wisdom - one can heat their house at greater than 100% efficiency by burning money and priceless.

However you really shouldn't be using them that way since there are far better uses for the value.

Ok, do you need to maintain 1,000 military bases around the globe? 500 wouldn't do it?

What about the F-35?

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