>>2050745>I literally have an economics degreeThat you think this matters is the first mark against you.
>blah blah blahAll that nonsense and you're missing the important point that COST MATTERS. You can't just claim "infrastructure is a public good" and then completely ignore the economics.
HOW good is the infrastructure?
HOW much is it worth?
WHY is it important?
Financial viability is a great way to assess the importance of a given project. If you do nothing but vanity projects you're going to go bankrupt and collapse.
>The military is not a profitable organization. Defense is not remotely exempt from market forces. But liberty is priceless and must be defended. Furthermore, plenty of military operations can be criticized as a foolish waste of resources not worth the cost.
>Governments should undertake vanity projectsOK, but how much should they actually spend on them? The answer can't be infinity, so you have to consider the financial viability of any project.
>I wouldn't call transportation infrastructure a vanity projectThat all depends on the relationship between the costs and benefits. With sufficiently high costs and sufficiently limited benefits, it's a vanity project. Finding the line requires assessing the value of the benefit. IOW looking at the MARKET FORCES. Expensive roads typically pay for themselves through economic output. Cheap roads are cheap and the bar is lower.
If a transit enterprise is not going to be profitable, you have to assess the subsidy and the opportunity cost of spending to maintain a service people don't use. The threshold is not infinite.
>moon landingWas a cold war military posturing project.
NASA's funding was massively reduced when the cold war ended.
The next space revolution came from SpaceX, a company very focused on market efficiency (even if their cash cow is still primarily government contracts).
