
The insanity of defense spending, and a lesson about policy illiteracy - ivankirigin
http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/155712505/the-insanity-of-defense-spending-and-a-lesson-about
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mixmax
Humans are terrible with big numbers. Once they become so big we don't have
real-world comparisons things start to break down. 12 is a number you can
relate to because you can picture 12 apples. And you can compare it with 100
apples. Or oranges ;-)

Once you get into the territory of millions, billions and trillions we don't
have any meaningful comparisons to guide us. The result is that we don't
really grok the difference between a million and a trillion.

The remedy is charts. If you make a barchart showing the difference between a
million and a trillion it becomes obvious that there's a huge difference.

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ivankirigin
The order difference between iRobot's revenue (10^8), and the defense budget
(10^11) is smaller than difference between a Starbucks coffee (10^0) and a car
(10^4) or a house (10^5). I would hope people could handle that math.

I suppose the mortgage crisis is evidence that people can't handle even that
every day math.

I agree visualization is a great solution.

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mixmax
Nice comparisons. The problem is not that people can't handle it, the problem
is that people don't think about it.

I'm pretty good at math (in comparison to most people here I'm probably
terrible but anyway) and I don't really think much about it. It's easy to do
the math and come up with comparisons like you did, but you're exposed to so
many numbers and so much information that you don't really bother.

Thus _"Government overruns budget by $10 billion"_ becomes the same headline
as _"Government overruns budget by $10 trillion"_ in my mind whereas the
headline _"teen has three daughters"_ is distinctly and instantly different
than _"teen has fifty daughters_ "

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ivankirigin

      teen has 3000 daughters

Indeed

------
Herring
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_ignorance>

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lionhearted
A lot of spending is corrupt like that: One F-22 part in every Congressional
district? That's hugely wasteful.

I remember reading a few years back about some kind of troop transport that
cost a cool billion to make - and the armed forces didn't want it any more!
They had enough, they didn't want more, but it was built in an important
senator's district, so they kept making this useless transport that they
military didn't want.

Way too much corruption and pork in American politics. The government should
be ruthless about getting the best prices. Whenever you do business, you
assume a risk you can't collect - with the government, it's the most stable
game in town, and they have economies of scale. They should be getting between
a 10% and 70% discount over market rates on everything they buy, instead of
paying 20% to 4000% premiums like they do.

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kingkongrevenge
I like how all the articles about the F-22 say it's a relic of the cold war; a
case of fighting the last war. Right now "the last war" is asymmetric bombing
of poor brown people. The next war very well might be a conventional war
against a nation with a serious air force.

I have no real opinions on the F-22, but all these dismissals of it as some
obvious waste are odd to me. Specific merits of the F-22 aside, pursuit of air
supremacy over technologically advanced nations is not so obviously a waste, I
don't think. It merits discussion.

