> I don't understand the desire to reduce government spending. It's all super high return on investment.
"Return on investment" (ROI) is only the start of the conversation. ROI is only part of the context. Think of it as a 3-tuple: (ROI, Target, TimeHorizon). One has to define all three for it to be clear. By "Target" I mean the target population and/or impact area. By "TimeHorizon" I mean the period of time over which the ROI is calculated.
This entire comment is intended to be completely non-ideological. Bring your own values and preferred ways of organizing society. (I'm not going to change your deep-seated values, anyway.) But to be intellectually honest, we have to say what we mean.
Even truth-seeking libertarians who prefer market-based approaches understand that many market-based mechanisms are sometimes not well suited for servicing to "hard to reach" customers. Practically, this might mean geographically remote. Generally, it means having a set of characteristics that make them sufficiently out of the parameter space that a market will serve. Some examples include: rural broadband and low-income urban areas that need medical services.
This is good. Although I’d make it a 4-tuple to make “target” clear. There are two aspects to target: “where is the impact on the return” and “where is the cost of the investment”.
"Return on investment" (ROI) is only the start of the conversation. ROI is only part of the context. Think of it as a 3-tuple: (ROI, Target, TimeHorizon). One has to define all three for it to be clear. By "Target" I mean the target population and/or impact area. By "TimeHorizon" I mean the period of time over which the ROI is calculated.
This entire comment is intended to be completely non-ideological. Bring your own values and preferred ways of organizing society. (I'm not going to change your deep-seated values, anyway.) But to be intellectually honest, we have to say what we mean.
Even truth-seeking libertarians who prefer market-based approaches understand that many market-based mechanisms are sometimes not well suited for servicing to "hard to reach" customers. Practically, this might mean geographically remote. Generally, it means having a set of characteristics that make them sufficiently out of the parameter space that a market will serve. Some examples include: rural broadband and low-income urban areas that need medical services.