That's the crux with all kinds of fundamental research, isn't it? Everyone considers it a basically useless wild goose change until sometimes, something comes along that completely restructures our understanding of the universe.
I wonder if people made the same argument against funding of research in nuclear fission...
USofA nuclear physcists certainly made such an argument against pursuing the development of nuclear fission weapons, they said such things were beyond the reach of US industry in argument against the intial pleas to do so from the UK MAUD committee and a following letter from Albert Einstein.
They were eventualy persuaded by an Autralian nuclear scientist acting on behalf of the Commonwealth MAUD scientists.
The issue with the endless(?) chase after ever more exotic particles is that every iteration levels up by some magnitude of effort, where nuclear fission weapons were once ( just out of | just within ) reach and subject to furious debate is more the case that ever fresh exotic particles expontentially escalate beyond actual resources.
Once we ring the circumference of the planet and use all the PetaWatts we can currently generate .. what next?
It'll take a while to level up to smashing suns together .. with no guarentee the rabbit hole is halfway plumbed.
The parent comment is saying that the next scale of actually useful particle colliders might be outside of practical reach. Note that by "useful", I mean capable of discovering new physics.
His comment is therefore in agreement with Sabine, and not with yours.
I wonder if people made the same argument against funding of research in nuclear fission...