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Comment by kamakazizuru | Hacker News Reader

I really tried to understand this - but completely fail to. Can you try and make any sense at all? How in the world is something productive - that leads to mankind as a whole gaining knowledge and information AND to India bolstering national pride and marketing itself as a Space logistics provider to the world - even remotely comparable to breaking windows? Geez - by your logic everyone should keep money in their mattress and go to bed.

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I think what he refers to is the broken window fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

It is not about, if the US space program was better/worse than the Indian one. But that we don't know the alternative outcome of a lot of smart people working, not on the space program, but on many different fields that could lead to a greater outcome than this one project (the work would be less visible to the public than one shiny big project but in the end there is (in my opinion) more gain for the people, because the market responds generally better to the needs of people than a bureaucracy)

yes but that makes a large assumption that those smart people would rather work on something else. there isnt much stopping them from going elsewhere and working on space programs - if thats what they'd rather do. this way the country is atleast keeping those folks around - and making sure the money stays within the economy.

I will link to mikeash comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6692694

Money is not equal wealth. You can spend money in a circle of two people a thousand times, that doesn't make the two richer. Or you can add 0's at the end of all bills, that doesn't make anyone more rich either.

I think it's more reasonable if we focus on wealth and not on money in this discussion.

The leading comment stated that expenditure is not cost. In that context the response is to the point. Your argument that it is a cost-benefit analysis is of course correct. But that is consistent with arguing that one can not simply wave the cost away as if it is not real.

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