From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Jun 10 2003 - 21:37:44 MDT
On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Emlyn O'regan wrote:
> Let me pose a different question:
> A little googling (not all that much, so I could be mistaken) tells me that
> the Iraq war has/will cost the US government (ie: the US people) between
> US$100 and US$200 billion. That's a lot of money.
It sure as hell is. The number I'm more familiar with is ~$70 billion.
But that is still a hell of a lot of money unless it ends up getting
paid for by Iraqi oil. With 112+ billion barrels in reserves, even
at a very low price of $10/barrel they could easily afford it.
> Given the choice, what would you rank as the most extropic way to expend
> US$200 billion?
It depends in part whether one wants to optimize short term life
extension or long term life extension.
Aubrey de Grey's "Institute of Biomedical Gerontology" which might
make a significant dent in aging I believe requires ~$100M over
10 years (= ~$1B). So it is a drop in the bucket compared with
the Iraqi situation. Yet funding for the NIH has approximately
doubled over the last 5-7 years so it may be difficult to see
how that might be increased substantially in the near future.
Given the post 911 realities the U.S. population is willing to
spend big on defense. Now whether that is spent wisely is a very
complex question. The fact that the U.S. military is now able
to largely get out of Saudi Arabia would seem to be good. But
leaving civilians as the primary Al Queda targets there leaves
many questions.
But expenses there will tend to be a drop in the bucket.
I would guess that significant programs to deal with the
HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa would probably come near the top
of my list and the U.S. appears to be doing that.
After HIV/AIDS and aging, one needs to solve world hunger
and that gets into some very complex issues (farm subsidies,
etc.) In the longer term there are a host of environmental
issues that are in turn tied to population issues that need
to be dealt with.
Robert
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