Comment by diy123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diy123 | Hacker News Reader

Hello HN'ers, I am a long-timer lurker on HN, don't post anything, don't have Karma. But I do want to respond to the comment by quonn below, which is an example of a broader type of comment for these kinds of news: some _developing_country_ invests in _scientific_project_. People say, why are you wasting money on this when you should be feeding your people? To that I say, countries should be feeding their people, as well as investing in science. As an individual, you are constrained by money because you can't print it. To a country, money does literally grow on trees, and a country can print as much money as it wants. What should a country do to remove poverty? Invest in projects that create jobs - massive infrastructure projects come to mind here. But also invest in cutting edge science and build a scientific infrastructure. A country should, to create new knowledge, attempt that which others have not attempted. Kennedy's Man on the Moon speech is very much in this spirit. Eventually scientific progress made anywhere benefits all humanity. So I cheer India (or any other country) in such efforts.

India has massive problems to do with poverty and public health that are massively linked with infrastructure. India needs to inspire new engineers and scientists and also needs to keep the existing ones in the country. On that basis alone, stuff like this is massively more beneficial than the price tag.

    a country can print as much money as it wants

Printing money is essentially a tax, because it reduces the value of the currency everyone else is holding through inflation.

Or another way: money is not physical resources, it is a measure of resources. How could printing money increase the physical resources available to a country?

If you are sneaky and in a slump, and you give the printed money to the right folk, it can kickstart trade.

This was the idea behind giving all that money to the banks, but the banks went and sat on it and now have the largest cash reserves for pretty much ever, so they were able to dump some of their other liquid assets, namely oil, which is a lot of the current glut we are blaming on OPEC.

Economics is messy.

Yes, in the short run. Who holds most of that money? In developing countries it is the elites. So if their holdings lose some value, they'll survive. But government spending puts money in the hands of people who need to work for a living. That will benefit the economy as these people will spend more and create demand. In the long run everyone becomes better off if a country undertakes a vigorous and well-thought out infrastructure program (including scientific infrastructure). Yes, I am a Keynesian.

I suspect most elites hold little of their portfolio in cash.

Sure, if the government taxes/borrows/prints to invest in things that help the economy that can have a positive net effect. I don't think hunting for neutrinos is a terribly great way to stimulate the economy.

The best argument, I suspect, is the same as for NASA in the US: the fraction of the budget spent on it is tiny (assuming this is true in India's case).

There is nothing wrong with investing in science per se. But there is a choice how to spend your money within science. If you are already a rich country, sure go ahead, burn money on CERN or whatever it is. It probably won't provide a tangible benefit for your people, but it is worth it for everyone in the long run. Nobody disputes that. But this depends on the economic reality in your country. Most people who responded to my comment basically ignored that reality. It's about priorities.

How rich does a country have to be, then, in order to be able to "burn money on CERN"? What is the "acceptable threshold" of poverty, healthcare coverage, civil liberties, and so forth at which a country can decide to divert money towards investing in science instead of solving these problems?

It's analogous to this XCKD, except with money instead of time: https://xkcd.com/1232/

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