Quote:
Originally Posted by mugaliens
It's not a matter of make-work, but rather, when a portion of work is circular, failing to add to the bottom line, and usually robbing from it. An oft-quoted example is one where an unnecessarily complicated tax code requires hiring tax accountants and tax lawyers. While some argue that creates jobs, the truth is that those jobs are paid for out of net profits that would otherwise have been reinvested in the company had the tax code been simpler, and the freed-up labor could have been put to better use either improving or marketing the product than simply complying with unnecessarily complicated tax law.
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Okay, I think I understand now, but I'm not sure how a space infrastructure project is parasitic.
What you write above reminds me of a few things I've read and heard over the last few months and thoughts I've had about the economy. There is a theory that an economy needs to be balanced between manufacturing, labor, and finance. Part of the current problem with the economy is that labor was busted and finances took too much of the pie, such that manufacturing suffered as the rates of return in finances made capital flee manufacturing, which had lower rates of return, which tried to respond by busting labor. Your comment above about tax-accountants and manufacturing seems to fit that model.
Moreover, there is a theory that automation and robotics will eventually make manufacturing even less of a mass employer in the future. This can be both good and bad. Efficiencies may increase, but the concept/ethic that people
must work for a living would seem poised to rob those efficiencies via make-work jobs, such as finance sector and other middle-management types of jobs.
Perhaps the space program and the economy and general wellbeing of the population in general would be served by another form of wealth distribution scheme. I don't want to get into politics here, but Milton Friedman's idea of the "Negative Income Tax" might be appropriate, and make spaceflight expenditures more palatable as an emergent growth industry. Maybe that just sounds like a rebranding of
breads and circuses but if we have the surplussage from mechanized industry, then it could work.