It always riled me that, with so much crap in the world, the powers that be can piss away money on nothing but greed. I remember reading an article a year or two ago that discussed oil control being the real reason for the second Iraq war, and specifically the cost of that war. It noted that the cost to date was in the trillions of dollars (I seem to recall approximately $3tn), but that an estimate for the cost of: developing an environmental alternative to oil, developing and building the distribution infrastructure, developing the cars to use it, and giving one of those cars to every family in America for free… would come to somewhere around $1-2tn. Of course it also noted that neither shareholders and CEOs of weapons and arms companies, nor those in the military establishments, nor those in oil companies, would make their quick buck if that were to happen. All of which saddens me.
So, I like it when I read other peoples’ comments expressing that same sentiment. From Slashdot today:
So why spend 20 years and 1 trillion dollars building a ship to explore the solar system?
Because it’s better than spending a trillion dollars to kill brown people with oil.
Hear hear!
For more ideas, see http://pol.moveon.org/trillion/
</alex>