Sure we can build more weapons, do social experiments that mostly fail and burn tens if not hundreds of billions with 0 or almost 0 returns, plenty of examples around. Heck, things like biofuels in EU have clearly negative overall impact yet we burned cash on it like there is no tomorrow.
This is not taking budget from other scientists who will have to play with rocks for next few decades, the whole article sounds like an envy of rather weird folks ("Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy" is really not the best places to ask such questions).
Overall, one of better uses of public money I've seen in past decade.
> Because of the extra radiation generated by the machine, it would need to sit twice as far underground as the Large Hadron Collider.
Since I live nearby, happy to see the proposed circle is mostly in France, relatively far from our place. Of course if some small black hole is created by accident it may not matter much.