Unless someone literally burnt the money, it did some good.
Then again, yea, $2.4B is just ridiculous, wonder what Jeri Ellsworth and Tilt5 (https://www.tiltfive.com) could have done with those resources...
Building a bridge that collapses minutes after construction also entails workers earning salaries, and perhaps learning something. that still doesn't mean it's a good use of funds, it's waste. you want the investment to create actual value for someone.
Example that gets almost everyone: Space Shuttle.
It was supposed to be reusable space truck that reduces cost. It was several times more expensive than conventional approach with non-reusable rockets and shuttle. It was infrequently used. It drained NASA budged from anything productive. Even those combined manned+cargo missions could have been achieved cheaper with double launch. It was objectively failure based on the goals and purpose of the project.
They developed so much new technology and inspired people. It was simply great piece of engineering and PR. We learned a lot.
I wonder if there were missions that would not be possible without it (maybe the Hubble launch and the AMS launch and installation) though most likely they would be adapted to work without it.
Yeah, maybe they could be a double launch or worked in some other way.
So, I agree with you. It is a waste. It is a waste of human hours that was spent with nothing to show in return.
Hey, don't compare the fraud of Magic Leap with the straightforward honesty and artistic legitimacy of K Foundation Burn a Million Quid [1] which produced not only art, but also heat and light, and at a fraction the cost.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Qu...
The 2.4 billion could have been used to create something bad.
Unless someone literally burnt the money, it did some good.
The looser is always those spending the 2.4B of course, but the two have different economic impact (the first one benefiting everyone, the second one only a few people being employed)
Spending that money in any fashion leads to equal amounts of consumption and investments elsewhere (indirect spending). So we can discount it from an oppotunity cost analysis of how the money is better spent, leaving us with the common sense conclusion that investing 2.4bn in something useless is indeed a waste of 2.4bn's of resources.
In fact, burning the money is actually better than spending the money on something unproductive - the former doesn't actually consume resources that could be used better. Burning money is essentially the same as giving it to the govt to spend as they would be free to print an amount equivalent to the burnt resources while keeping inflation as it was before.
ah, the good ole broken windows fallacy strikes again.
Not like if we had spent that 2.4B on something else, those people who worked on that something else wouldnt learn anything, or earned any salary.