What a Waste...

Over at the Mises Economics Blog, Anthony Gregory wishes (as I'm sure we all do) that the U.S. government, instead of wasting so much money on the failed/destructive welfare-warfare state, had invested all its tax revenues into... making a dragon. A real, living, breathing dragon. Not only is he right, he is now officially a genius:

My friend, not exactly a libertarian but not a socialist (pro-market, anti-war, anti-cop) — okay, pretty libertarian, actually — thinks that if the US government, for the last 40 years, had spent nothing on war or welfare or anything else, but retained the same tax schedules, it would have been able to fund the creation of a dragon.

Yes, a dragon. As in a large flying nearly reptilian beast that breathes fire.

Aside from some limits of socialist calculation, he has a point. Maybe even with government inefficiency taken for granted, he might be onto something.

The genetic and mechanical engineering and research could have been advanced if, starting with the moon landing, the feds ditched all other endeavors and focused on creating a dragon.

What do you think? For trillions of bucks in today's dollars, could we have a dragon? I think so.

Would it be a more libertarian expenditure than most things the government spends money on? Surely.

Would it be a _cooler_ thing to spend money on than what the government has spent money on instead? Most certainly.

My friend, I believe, has stumbled upon a brilliant insight that would make Bastiat proud. For all this welfare-warfare spending, the feds could have made a dragon by now. The unseen cost of socialism and militarism in the American experience has been a dragon.

With a dragon, no country would mess with us, because we have a dragon.

We would again be the envy of the world.

I think the Islamo-fascists would have to agree, even, that there must be something to the American way of life that we could produce a dragon whereas all their jihadist war prayers and theocratic socialism continue to yield nothing so spectacular.