> Now from an economic and investment standpoint. The most important angle here is one of marginal benefit. If we are already spending 100 billion a year on disease, poverty, and climate change (this is a very conservative guess), how much good is adding a few billion more? It's likely not going to move the needle extensively. However, that money that will make an enormous difference in our space endeavors, letting us reap some of those second order benefits.
I feel like this is faulty reasoning. That money might fund a project that otherwise wouldn't get funded which may cure cancer (unlikely, but honestly I'd say finding a moderate breakthrough for treating a specific strain of cancer with a few billion dollars is about as likely as that few billion dollars getting us significantly closer to Mars). It's not that every project is getting funded and it's just how much they get funded - some projects don't get funded at all. Nobody can predict the future which is why startup investing is so hard - the winners often start out looking like losers (DropBox, AirBnB, Google, Tesla, Apple all struggled to raise money initially). And big accomplishments often come from underdogs, like the Wright Brothers (who were up against much better funded and better educated competition). And sometimes the best discoveries are completely accidental - like penicillin.
Nobody knows the best way to allocate resources. I think the smart thing to do is to back things because you believe in them, not because they seem underappreciated. And honestly, Elon Musk has such a cult following that I'd say anything he does gets way more love than all the other things that money could be spent on.
I feel like this is faulty reasoning. That money might fund a project that otherwise wouldn't get funded which may cure cancer (unlikely, but honestly I'd say finding a moderate breakthrough for treating a specific strain of cancer with a few billion dollars is about as likely as that few billion dollars getting us significantly closer to Mars). It's not that every project is getting funded and it's just how much they get funded - some projects don't get funded at all. Nobody can predict the future which is why startup investing is so hard - the winners often start out looking like losers (DropBox, AirBnB, Google, Tesla, Apple all struggled to raise money initially). And big accomplishments often come from underdogs, like the Wright Brothers (who were up against much better funded and better educated competition). And sometimes the best discoveries are completely accidental - like penicillin.
Nobody knows the best way to allocate resources. I think the smart thing to do is to back things because you believe in them, not because they seem underappreciated. And honestly, Elon Musk has such a cult following that I'd say anything he does gets way more love than all the other things that money could be spent on.