[sophacles]

At a 9 Billion USD price tag, what are our governments buying for us? There must be something beyond scientific intellectual curiosity. Those of us with this curiosity may be happy to pay for it, but how were politicians convinced? What value will this provide to the governments of the world who made the decision to purchase this answer.

False dilemma. When we spend trillions of dollars a year to kill people in the name of stopping violence, 10^-3 of that for curiosity is not something that is rational to attack. Particularly when exploration for curiosity's sake has led to plenty of demonstrably beneficial results.

[protomyth]

"Your wasting a lot of money here, so you shouldn't mind wasting a lesser amount here"

Government funding needs to justify itself, not against other uses for the money. The bills have come due and we need to cut out what isn't vital. 9 billion could have paid a lot of health insurance policies.

I'm glad they valued this, but it needs to be valuable based on its own merit.

[jpxxx]

The actual value of a government program is a meaningless thing because the calculations you do depend entirely upon what you or your cohort personally value.

The American military's V-22 tilt-rotor "Osprey" helicopter program will cost approximately $36B. A cursory web search will show that it is considered a deathtrap that does not meet most of its design objectives.

So is the value of a program to build suicide machines worth four times more than knowing more about how foundational reality is constructed? Blark, argh, divide by zero. If you get paid to build suicide machines, it's a valuable program. If you get paid to fly a suicide machine, it both is and it isn't. If you are watching someone who is flying a suicide machine die, it probably isn't. If you like science more than you like watching people die, no. If you like watching people die more than you like science, yes. On and on and over and over in limitless permutations multiplied by every taxpayer.

All you can say with certainty is that someone or some party in the course of a government process valued that process at some point enough to make it happen.

[protomyth]

I would bet "knowing more about how foundational reality is constructed" is probably worth less to a lot of people than say research into the top 10 cause of death by disease.

I'm glad they chose to fund this, but my original point is that no government funding these days should survive unless it can be justified. We cannot keep running deficits.

Your "cursory web search" might want to include actual statistics on accidents particularly compared to the CH-46 it is replacing.

[jpxxx]

My example was pure hyperbole. :) But I think my point stands: any government program can be justified by some party, deficit or not. Even deficit spending itself is a virtue for some.

There is no test to separate pork from fiber where there is no fundamental accountability. Spending programs exist because spending programs exist.

[protomyth]

I figured :), but I love reading about aircraft and hate Wired's reporting on anything involving risk or the military.

At this point, if it doesn't keep the lights on, the trains running, or protect / save lives; it needs to be looked at for cutting.

[bcbrown]

Are you suggesting that research into the top 10 causes of death isn't a lot more than the $9 billion spent on the equipment needed to discover the Higgs?

The NIH gets $30B/yr[1]. I don't know where the $9B figure for the LHC came from, but I bet it's total cost, over what, 10-15 years?

[1]http://nih.gov/about/almanac/appropriations/part2.htm

[protomyth]

Nope, not saying that at all, I was saying that an additional $9 billion on the top 10 might have been prioritized higher. Once again, I am glad they funded the LHC, but my thesis is that government spending needs to be cut to the bone until the deficit and unpaid liabilities are dealt with. Much like we cut spending after WWII.

[sophacles]

Im not saying that. Im saying if you care about waste, quit attacking minor inefficiencies when instead, there is a giant one right there. I have no problem talking about whether some money spent on science has value, right after we deal with the huge money sink in other places. It's basic triage. Don't waste our time worrying about pocket change when you're burning hundred dollar bills because the smoke is pretty.

[protomyth]

The problem with most government budgets is that most of the problems are the pocket change. All the little things need to be cleaned up to get at the bigger issues.

[sophacles]

I'm not a mathematician, but I am pretty sure you can go by a rough order of magnitude scale... If you have gross headings that are many orders of magnitude larger than others, your best bet is to look in those large ones for waste first. Scientific research would have to be eliminated tens or hundreds of times over to get to a level of savings that could probably be removed easier from waste in headings like defense and law enforcement and corporate subsidy.

[protomyth]

Mathematically, sure. Math isn't the problem in politics, territory is. All the little things add to people's territory and patronage. It also keeps people from making the big cuts. We need a culture change to spend the money responsibly and it will only happen when "it's only a couple of million" is removed from our vocabulary.

As an aside in 2011, Defense and international security assistance is 20% of the budget. Social Security spending was higher than that (731 vs 718 billion). Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP was a bit bigger at $769 billion. The rest of the safety net style programs was $466 billion. $230 billion was spent paying interest on the national debt.

[kcima]

I updated my comment to communicate better what I was asking. I do fully support this kind of research. I am interested in the technological directions and discoveries for society that this research is expected to provide. It seems odd that politicians who don't necessarily have specific interest in theoretical physics are convinced to fund a project of this size and scope without tangible benefits.

[grego]

It's basic research. Some countries' politicians were convinced that you need basic research to do applied research. It's also a great international collaborative project, where subcontractors from many countries get actual money making contracts to build the required detectors, magnets, etc.