Same as the other topiconly with different criteria:
- must have been funded exclusively by the government
- must be expensive
- must be a waste of money or at least unprofitable
Iām having difficulty with the first criteria, funded exclusively by the government, since governmentās only source of funds is John Q. Public, . . .
With that in mind, Disneyland on the Potomac is funded exclusively by John Q Public, demonstrated itself to be very expensive, and is nearly a complete waste of money and unprofitable, but I would be hard pressed to cite an example of either personally.
On a more serious note, I would submit Public Education. Sadly, it also has to be one of the most destructive institutions. The conceptual faculty of most exposed to it tend to lend nearly unquestionable support to its funders, and cite the necessity of its continuenceā¦
Californiaās high-speed rail may never happen, so I nominate the TGV in France. Itās luxurious and thrill to ride, but itās one of the reasons theyāre broke.
The Canadian Gun Registry. Billions of Canadian tax payer money all so that we wouldnāt catch a single criminal or save a single life. Itās gone now but our socialists still want to bring it back.
The Space Shuttle program seems to fit the bill. Space shuttle program cost was around 200 billion dollars. I dont know what the return on investment is though.
A google search of Soviet projects turns up something called the White Sea - Baltic Canal, built from 1931 to 1933 by Gulag prisoners with basic hand tools (lol) at the cost of some 100,000 lives. Hereās a paragraph from one of the websites I looked at:
āThe icing on the cake? The canal was completely useless when finished. For most of its length it was too shallow to admit anything larger than a small barge. Later a book of propaganda detailing the biographies of āheroicā workers and engineers, intended for distribution in capitalist countries, had to be recalled because in the downtime Stalin had ordered all the main characters shot.ā
How about the Ryugyong Hotel of North Korea? Construction began in 1987 with planned completion in 1989, but after several delays construction was halted. It stood topped out but without windows or interior fittings for the next sixteen years. Construction eventually resumed, and it was expected to officially open in April 2012, but didnāt. Itās still considered a work in progress.
Iāll also throw in the Trabant, which was the most common vehicle within the former communist states of Eastern Europe.
USA annual GDP is about $15 trillion.
- USA nuclear weapons program: total cost about $10 trillion dollars.
- USA aircraft carriers: $22 billion lifetime cost * about 80 since 1922 = $1.7 trillion
- Apollo program: $170 billion (2005 dollars)
- Apollo program: $170 billion (2005 dollars)
Funny, I would have considered that to be one of mankindās crowning achievements to date. What else captivates the human spirit of adventure and ingenuity more?
Yes, it was one of mankindās crowning achievements to date. And guess what: It was accomplished by the US government, the contractors, and the taxpayers. It greatest benefit was as a monument to scientific and technical level of the USA in the twentieth century. And a monument of American productivity and wealth. Cost in 2020 dollars. I gather it was not profitable (which was not its point), although there were spinoff technical benefits in service to people on earth. From ancient Mesopotamia to the present, government activities have fostered technological advances.
Twin sister of Apollo is Artemis, which program will bring humans and robots to the moon and aims to start a colony there. These moon-landing programs are indeed monuments to the American government and the American civilization. However, I should support such US programs only insofar as they can be justified purely by their advancement, if any, of national defense.
So collectivist activities are game changers. Sufficient cause as opposed to necessary , no ?
The pyramids of Egypt perhaps are a greater monument of sortsā¦ a headstone clearly marking the price, the involuntary sacrifice of other lives with greater transparency, a testament to the glory to the vision of the few who wielded power, physical and mental, over the many.
For all the promise of what America could and should one day be, the Apollo program is a grim illustration of how manās development of technology (even perhaps if necessary with the backdrop of a cold war) has outpaced manās progress in wisdom and morality, in politics and ethics.
I for one would rather that technological advances only follow our social and political progress towards individualism ā¦
I am sure our voluntary funding of such ventures would have been all the more spiritually pure and clean even if delayed by the decades or perhaps centuries it would have taken us to deserve the pride proper to such an untainted achievement.
1 Like
Isnāt this a trip down memory lane? Eleven years ago in this very thread I declined to nominate Californiaās high-speed rail on the grounds that it might never happen. It still hasnāt happened.
2 Likes
2 hours ago, tadmjones said:
So collectivist activities are game changers. Sufficient cause as opposed to necessary , no ?
Yes, I donāt think they are necessary in the longer run. I suspect that the freedom for innovation for profit in the market economy helped the US and NATO stay ahead of the Soviet Union, an enormously clamped down society, in advancing technologies, including for war.
Also, quite possibly the Aswan Dam could have eventually been achieved by private consortiums for profits. I guess that dam is another monument to collective action by coercive taxes in the USA and in Brittain.
Apart from military usefulness, I think the US advances into space (or under the ocean) should be by private commercial venture for profit. That is the natural way to go and stay grounded to the bundle of needs of human populations.
3 hours ago, Boydstun said:
Yes, I donāt think they are necessary in the longer run. I suspect that the freedom for innovation for profit in the market economy helped the US and NATO stay ahead of the Soviet Union, an enormously clamped down society, in advancing technologies, including for war.
Also, quite possibly the Aswan Dam could have eventually been achieved by private consortiums for profits. I guess that dam is another monument to collective action by coercive taxes in the USA and in Brittain.
Apart from military usefulness, I think the US advances into space (or under the ocean) should be by private commercial venture for profit. That is the natural way to go and stay grounded to the bundle of needs of human populations.
I would include voluntary endeavors even when not for a profit.
I could imagine people with integrity, volunteering their time and resources to some common cause or aim without ulterior motive, coercion, or corruption, because they simply want to see some goal achieved.
I think estimating the total output of human effort ,in the context of a Bronze Age level of technology , needed to produce the Great Pyramid at Giza indicates a societal structure closer to one functioning on voluntary bases. It seems to be a monumental achievement of hyper focused manual output , output that would restrict the available total output of the society or economy for agricultural output needed to feed the working population. If all the labor came from forced slaves , it would follow all the necessary output of the other segments of the society would need to have been slaves , and as curious a fact as Washington found , slaves tend not to produce at what one would reasonably expect to be their true potential.
I doubt they had paid paternity leave , but I doubt too that the structures could have beenā beaten out ā of humans working in a coordinated manner.
Archaeologists are with you on this point: Were the Egyptian pyramids built by slaves? | BBC Science Focus Magazine
1 Like
11 hours ago, tadmjones said:
I think estimating the total output of human effort ,in the context of a Bronze Age level of technology , needed to produce the Great Pyramid at Giza indicates a societal structure closer to one functioning on voluntary bases. It seems to be a monumental achievement of hyper focused manual output , output that would restrict the available total output of the society or economy for agricultural output needed to feed the working population. If all the labor came from forced slaves , it would follow all the necessary output of the other segments of the society would need to have been slaves , and as curious a fact as Washington found , slaves tend not to produce at what one would reasonably expect to be their true potential.
I doubt they had paid paternity leave , but I doubt too that the structures could have beenā beaten out ā of humans working in a coordinated manner.
āPaidā paternity leave is slavery of those who āpayā for it.
Pharos accumulated riches by force, they did not create wealth by trade.
Certainly many workers, managers, foremen, whip wielders, and others who were only enslaved mentally (by the fraud of the Cosmic order of things and perhaps the promise of a hereafter) were treated well (if from the right families or of the right race etc) and paid from the iāll gotten coffers of their ruler, but for every so called āfreeā man I have no doubt there was ample supply of work oxen, dogs, and slaves to work with them. I donāt know what the statistics were.
I see nothing but fraud and slavery/tax and conquest there.