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One Thing the Federal Government SHOULD Be Wasting Money On

I'm generally of the opinion that the federal government shouldn't be spending very much money on just about anything* because the federal government is a garbage entity run by both self-interested bureaucrats who care little about freedom and also politicians who care more about giving goodies to their supporters than anything else. But I'm willing to put aside my ideological hesitance on the issue of wasteful spending in order to (probably) waste money on defending the planet against the threat of life-ending asteroids.

Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok explains why this is a good call:

Large asteroid strikes are low-probability, high-death events–so high-death that by some estimates the probability of dying from an asteroid strike is on the same order as dying in an airplane crash. ...

I am also a contributor to an Indiegogo campaign to develop a planetary defense system–yes, seriously! I don’t expect the campaign to succeed because, as our principles of economics textbook explains, too many people will try to free ride. But perhaps the campaign will generate some needed attention.

This is obviously a situation where many people would benefit from asteroid defense yet few would be willing to contribute to it. Open the spigots, feds. Unless you have more important things to fund, of course, like a traveling romance novel exhibit. Then by all means leave the planet wide open to being destroyed by a giant space rock. That makes a lot of sense.

*Except for national defense, and then we should spend whatever it takes to crush our enemies and drive them before us—I quite enjoy the lamentations of their women.