When I say that the value of that information is larger than the total costs of WW2, it means, of course, that another war of larger scale has been avoided.
This, of course, assumes a model that anticipates that history repeats itself, and that fixes to existing problems have value, even though they just remove problems instead of providing a physical product.
In the same way, the biggest value of conscription is the information that is in the people who are no longer doing service.
We invest a lot of money in our own education, because it has value. Don't underestimate it.
You can avoid an illness by buying a physical product or information. Both cost money to produce, both can be marketed and delivered, and both fix the same problem. However, the world is really bad at doing economic calculations on information, so that's why we still buy physical products in cases where it is totally nonsense. |
