The broken window fallacy is that of breaking things and repairing/rebuilding them to generate economic activity, i.e., an endless cycle. The OP is arguing that this mission creates new economic assets and activities that expand India's economic base.
In fact it is a similar situation if you believe that the mission itself does not produce sufficient value.
The salaries are not merely money being cycled around in the economy if the labor being paid for results in the scientists not having time or inclination to produce other labor. Furthermore, it is likely that the resources launched off of the planet could have been used for something else.
Whether or not it is equivalent to the broken window fallacy really does depend on subjective assessments of the value produced by the missions. However, it is also worth noting that even the broken window fallacy is not some universal law, and relies on its own assumptions. In certain market failure conditions destroying something and fixing it as a mechanism for increasing the velocity of money could have a net benefit.
Although it is very useful to distinguish between the real economy and money transactions as though money is an abstraction for resources being traded around, the best policies also acknowledge the existence of money, as well as friction in the economy.
I think you're spot on here. And reading `tn13's comment [0], I think it's clear their goal is to produce real, tangible value with their space program. There's an enormous amount of waste in developing an industry, and I would just as soon write off a Mars mission as part of that. (After all, if you want credibility for your satellite launch operations, safely hitting Mars is a pretty good indicator!)
The creation of valuable knowledge, experience, and technology is a valid argument. Mentioning that engineers' salaries get taxed is a bad argument, since that's just a smaller portion of what was already tax revenue.
The 'broken window Fallacy' is Bastiat's observation that while the income generated for glaziers from repairing rboken windows is indeed a form of economic activity, and that this is nice enough if you're in the window business, it's economically inefficient because the economic activity merely restores the status quo instead of going to finance new production - had the window remained unbroken, the shopkeeper might have bought a book or a suit of clothes. The glazier's gain is the shopowner's loss and so there's no net improvement.
But that's a wholly inappropriate analogy for this situation of expenditure going towards Indian scientists and technicians, because they were engaged in new and productive work rather than merely receiving a subsidy. The Indian government didn't have an existing interplanetary program that was scrapped and replaced with another; it built one from scratch. In terms of Bastiat's analogy, it would be as if the shopkeeper hired the glazier to install a new window in what had previously been a blank wall.
The direct economic value of measuring whether there is methane in Mars' atmosphere is intangible - just as it would be hard to measure the impact of a newly-added window on a shopkeeper's turnover at the time of its installation. It could also be argued that NASA or some other space agency could conduct the same measurement on some future Mars project, and so the ISRO effort is probably duplicative. But even if the direct economic output of the craft itself is assumed to be zero, the development of the satellite manufacturing and launch capability, which is a net economic gain too, whereas the replacement of a broken window does not have any innovative component (since the prior existence of the window means the capability to make it already existed).
It seems to me that you and the other two posters who are arguing this position are making the implicit assumption that that NASA et al. have a comparative advantage in the development of space technology and that therefore Indian efforts are economically superfluous, in addition to your general distaste for the notion of government as client.
But that's a wholly inappropriate analogy for this situation of expenditure going towards Indian scientists and technicians, because they were engaged in new and productive work...
You've completely ignored what Zizee said and substituted a different argument. Zizee said this:
Let's just forget for a moment that valuable skills and infrastructure are being created...
Zizee is claiming that even if the mars mission were useless (kind of like breaking/fixing windows) the project would be justified simply because salaries are being paid.
'But even if the direct economic output of the craft itself is assumed to be zero, the development of the satellite manufacturing and launch capability, which is a net economic gain too, whereas the replacement of a broken window does not have any innovative component (since the prior existence of the window means the capability to make it already existed).'
Situation 1: There is a window. It gets broken. The shopkeeper pays for it to be replaced, instead of buying a book.
Situation 2: There is no window, and there is no need for a window. But the shopkeeper pays for a window anyway, instead of buying a book.
Situation 1 is restoring the status quo, situation 2 is financing new production - but they seem equally bad, because in both cases you're paying someone to do something that doesn't (at the beginning of the situation) need to be done.
I'm not saying that we're in situation 2 here, because windows are in fact useful. But zizee's original argument was roughly, "let's forget all the benefits that we get from windows, this project is paying the wages of glaziers, this money will get taxed and etc." And I think that that particular argument in favour of this project fails, and I think pravda was correct to point it out.
Situation 2: There is no window, and there is no need for a window. But the shopkeeper pays for a window anyway, instead of buying a book.
There's no need for any voluntary purchase, by definition. You're arguing that we should only spend so as to maximize utility, but utility is subjective and that's why we value markets over individuals. After all, what is the utility of the foregone book? It may merely afford pleasure to the reader, or be hurled across the room. It doesn't matter; the book's significance lies not in its content but in the fact of its production, for which the demand would not otherwise exist if the same money had been spent on the repair of a broken window.
> You're arguing that we should only spend so as to maximize utility, but utility is subjective and that's why we value markets over individuals.
Um. I'm probably misinterpreting you, but it sounds like you're suggesting that we should force people to buy things they don't want or need in order to make the market healthy?
If you are saying that, I strongly disagree. Both causally (I don't think that will make the market healthy) and normatively (even if it did, I would need a lot of convincing to advocate that).
If you're not, could you clarify?
> for which the demand would not otherwise exist if the same money had been spent on the repair of a broken window.
Or if the money had been spent on any window.
By "there is no need for a window", I meant "nobody cares if there's a window there". In both situations, money transfers from the shopkeeper to the glazier, the glazier does some glazing, and the shopkeeper ends up no better off than before.
From the perspective of the Broken Window Fallacy, though, buying a new window is equivalent to buying a book. Need is not a component of the fallacy whatsoever. Thus, your final statement is incorrect. pravda was not pointing out anything; the fallacy is not applicable to this situation.
pravda did not point that out. pravda claimed zizee was using the Broken Window Fallacy. zizee's argument and your summarization of it are not examples of the fallacy. Nor is situation 2 in your post above. The fallacy has nothing to do with something being useful or necessary.
The broken window just doesn't strike me as a central part of the broken window fallacy. To me, the important part is that people see the glazier getting money in exchange for a service, and think that economics is happening and this is a good thing; but they don't see that if the glazier didn't get that money, the bookseller would.
So I'd say that yeah, zizee is committing the broken window fallacy, even if the broken window itself has no analogous component in vis reasoning.
(But I'm not going to argue about it if you continue to disagree. That would be a profoundly boring argument.)
> because they were engaged in new and productive work
Well, new and productive work is not equivalent to valuable work, for possibly a pretty big number of definitions of "valuable". Of course, "valuable" is subjective.
I mean, of course, in the global future context, this endeavor may contribute a lot of value, but what if I am starving and I probably wont be there to take advantage of that value? With sufficient people in this situation, the value of this project is pretty low.
Economies run in parallel, not in series. As I pointed out elsewhere, this success is likely to attract a lot of outside investment to India as other countries and firms will want to take advantage of India's low-cost space expertise (and possibly avoid dealing with the US government and its complex technology-transfer rules). So spending $100 million demonstrating your space capabilitiies is a fantastic deal if it results in billions flowing into the country, which I confidently predict it will.
Billions flowing into the country does not mean that they will be distributed to those in need. But even if they are, a lot of people need those 100mil now and cant wait for billions later. Unless we accept the poverty percentage of India as an axiom. No pun intended.
