I hate these economic arguments. They throw around big numbers to scare you away but really they aren't big. Let's look at the LHC, which cost $4.75bn to build and costs $5.5bn/yr[0]. This may sound like a lot, but also consider that it took a decade to build ($0.5bn/yr for the first 10 years). Then consider that it is a joint multinational effort. If you're a member state (European) here's what your country contributes yearly[1]. The highest is Germany which does 20% of the member state contributions, at a whopping total of $236 million/yr (it is in CHF, but it is almost identical to the USD so I swapped). The US gives some grants in the half billion orders but I am having a harder time finding good logs.<p>The other thing I hate about this is that the numbers reported in the article are clearly inflationary. The use the precise phrasing " It’s entirely possible that the price could swell to $100 billion." while highlighting the big number. Well let's check another source. CNET says $23bn. So that would require a 5x over budget, which would be quite high. I know HN loves Hossenfelder, but she is overly pessimistic. At least in my group of physicists, we don't know other physicists who like her much (not that I hate her, just more ambivalent). Pessimists are good, but they shouldn't dominate conversations the same way optimists shouldn't.<p>Either way, it is clear that this type of money is very small when we are discussing country budgets. It should not be inflated and should not be sold as if there is a single country buying it (which it is well cheap enough to be done. Hell, Bezos and Musk could each have one, or several. Hell, there's at least 20 billionaires that wouldn't have issues building their own and funding them for significant periods of time).<p>So the real question is if we should build it, not the cost. As a former physicist, I do think the argument for building one is weak. It is correct that we don't have any great things to test. But there are reasons to do so. We need to consider it will take at least another decade to build, which theorists will hopefully come up with something in that time. If they don't, we can still test precision levels which is highly helpful. But there are other intangible things that are hard to evaluate. Anytime we humans tackle difficult problems and push the boundaries of what we can do, we learn a lot. That's where spinoffs come from and we've seen them in every major scientific endeavor (NASA, CERN, LIGO, and many more). Also, what happens when you put a bunch of smart people from many countries in a room together? There's political advantages (and why I think it is a shame Bush killed the American accelerator). There's also the fact that if we stop doing this, we'll lose talent and skill. So yeah, the upsides aren't crazy good like finding a new fundamental particle, but it also isn't that expensive. That's the real conversation that needs to be had.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-does-it-cost-to-find-a-higgs-boson" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-d...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.cern_budget" rel="nofollow">https://www.lhc-closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.cern...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.cnet.com/science/cern-wants-to-build-a-new-23-billion-super-collider-thats-100-kilometres-long/" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnet.com/science/cern-wants-to-build-a-new-23-bi...</a>