300 million lbs of fireworks and 2.7 billion dollars gone in a cloud of smoke.

  • masterspace
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    3 days ago

    The money itself? Sure. But that’s not what people talk about when they talk about money, they are usually referring to what the money represents, i.e. resources, which were all burnt up and used to create that fire work when they could have gone to something else.

    i.e. if we spent some huge proportion of our money on fireworks every year, we would still have the same amount of money on paper in the economy, but absolutely everything else would cost far more. From our actual lived perspective we would be poorer.

    • blazera@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Thats just not how money works. We did spend a huge amount of our money on fireworks, things didnt become more expensive.

      • masterspace
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        3 days ago

        That is absolutely just how money works, if that same money had gone to say, healthcare companies instead of fireworks companies, we would have the same amount of paper money, and we wouldn’t have fireworks, but we’d have lower healthcare costs since we already paid some of them.

        • blazera@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          You’re bringing up a lot of examples that literally happen in reality and do not have the results you are claiming. Healthcare companies have been both steadily receiving more money and increasing their prices.

          • masterspace
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            2 days ago

            Assuming you’re talking about American healthcare companies, thats because you have a broken nonsensical healthcare system filled with middlemen who will suck up profits.

            That has nothing to do with the concept of opportunity cost. Pick a different industry, like agriculture / food then. If you spend $20 on food every month instead of fireworks, then feeding yourself the rest of the food you need is $20 cheaper.