That was the caption suggested by a wag over at Free Republic.

One of the fundamental fallacies of economics is called the “broken window” fallacy. It’s used to justify all manner of government job-creation schemes, and it betrays a fundamental ignorance of basic economics. It goes something like this: “Riots or natural disasters are good for the economy, because they create jobs replacing the broken windows, and repairing broken buildings and infrastructure.”

The fallacy comes, of course, from ignoring the cost of the destruction. Which country would have more wealth: one that builds ten cities, or one that builds, destroys, and rebuilds the same city ten times?

The same resources are required in both cases, and just as many “jobs” are “created.” In fact, in the second scenario, even more “jobs” are “created” than the first, because we have a full employment program for city demolishers, as well as city rebuilders. Now, of course, when a hurricane hits Florida, and federal aid comes in, it does temporarily improve the “economy” of Florida, in the sense that there are new jobs that need to be filled, but it comes at the cost of damaging the national economy, by taking resources that could have otherwise been employed in creating new things, rather than restoring old.

The same logic would also dictate that a farmer, rather than waiting until fall to harvest his crop, should instead hire many more laborers, and every week, plow under the plants and replant the fields. I hope that these illustrations are sufficient to demonstrate that neither natural or human-caused disasters are good for economies.

Unfortunately, many well-meaning space advocates make a similar error when they argue thusly: “People shouldn’t complain about all the money that goes into space. Not a single dime goes into space. It all stays here right on the ground, providing jobs for scientists and engineers, who then spend their salaries on the local economy.” There was even a Chase Econometrics study performed back in the early eighties, which many activists continue to cite, that came up with a “multiplier effect” of something like fourteen times, for the benefit of spending money on space activities.

The problem with such analyses is that they don’t consider the opportunity costs. It’s possible, even likely, that money spent by private individuals, pursuing their own ends, would have an even higher “multiplier effect.” And in terms of the money being recirculated in the economy, that will happen regardless of what the scientists and engineers do, even if they sit home and do nothing, as long as they get paid.

It is not sufficient to say that we are creating jobs. We have to ask, are we creating wealth? Unfortunately, while that occasionally happens with government space expenditures, most of the time, it does not, and to the degree that we do produce useful things with NASA funds, it is done very inefficiently, because of the need to satisfy political imperatives. And until we recognize space as a potential new venue for the creation of wealth (as opposed to “exploration” and “science” and “international cooperation”), it will not be possible to raise the private investment funding needed to actually achieve that potential.

The WaPo weighed in on Pentagon pork in an editorial yesterday. Unfortunately, many weapons systems are supported more by the lobbying ability of their developers than by actual military need. You can be sure that the Crusader has subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors scattered all over the fifty states.

This makes for good politics, but expensive hardware, even when it’s a justifiable weapons purchase (I have no firm opinion on whether or not this one is). Spreading the wealth in this manner increases management and transportation costs considerably, compared to consolidating the effort in a single colocated area, but it makes it a lot easier sell to the Congress. (And boy, isn’t “Crusader” a peach of a politically incorrect name for the current war?)

The editorial also points out the tension between the Pentagon and the services, and the back stabbing and duplicity with which Mr. Rumsfeld has to deal, in attempting to get the most defense for the dollar.

NASA and its contractors, unfortunately, do the same thing (yet another reason that government space hardware is so expensive). Every contractor’s lobbyist and marketing rep worth his salt always has at least one briefing chart in his briefcase that shows all of the locations of the tiers of manufacturers that build his company’s product. Of course, to someone like me, who is more interested in creating wealth than jobs, and who wants to make space travel affordable, this is not a program feature, but a bug.

And like the Pentagon with its unruly services, NASA headquarters, in the District of Columbia, traditionally has little control over the centers in Houston, Huntsville and the Cape, with their own defenders on the Hill. Stalin once famously asked, “How many armies does the Pope have?” A similar question could be asked of NASA HQ: How many congressmen and Senators does NASA headquarters have?

This is one of the reasons that it’s so difficult to fill the office of NASA Administrator. It’s a job with a lot of responsibility, but an utterly inadequate amount of power or authority. Decisions are made not on the basis of how to most effectively achieve the national goal, whether it be military effectiveness, or providing research capability on orbit. They’re made, instead, on how many jobs will be created in how many congressional districts. Those who continue to think that the government should fund their space dreams should ponder the implications…

Researchers have figured out how to make carbon nanotubes up to eight inches long, using chemical vapor deposition.

That means that very strong, very lightweight cables are just around the corner.

I had almost three thousand visits yesterday. That’s almost double any previous day. Must have been all the linking from Glenn.

There’s a fairly good overview of the current space station situation, with some history, over at the Orlando Sentinel today.

However, the story is a little incomplete and in one case misleading. It discusses the station as though its purpose was always just about science, which is palpable nonsense, though certainly its supporters like to say, and even imagine that it was. It was about jobs, and votes, and international relations, and even national security. (The Russians were brought into it in the ’90s partly in the hopes of keeping their engineers busy, and out of the pay of Saddam, Kim and the Iranian mullahs. It didn’t work all that well.)

Here’s the misleading part.

One potential source of money that NASA has tried to attract — commercial customers — never responded enough to make a major difference.

One would infer from reading this that there was never any commercial interest in using the station. The reality is that there was never any serious NASA interest–they went through the motions out of deference to Congress, but they were never willing to do any of the deals that were brought before them. Just ask Bob Bigelow and others. NASA has put so many constraints on any commercial deals (banning, for instance, advertising of any kind) that it would have been surprising if any deals had been done. But to blame private enterprise for this failure is to rewrite history.

The space station program has been a disaster from its inception, because there has never been any clear understanding of why we were building it. As the Cheshire Cat said, if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. NASA and the space station seem to have found a cul de sac.

I think Lileks likes Spiderman. Guess I’ve gotta go see it…

Captain den Beste has an interesting speculation on what the world would look like to the ancient Egyptians–if they lived on Europa.

Captain den Beste has an interesting speculation on what the world would look like to the ancient Egyptians–if they lived on Europa.

Captain den Beste has an interesting speculation on what the world would look like to the ancient Egyptians–if they lived on Europa.