India and Mars

That’s a very strange title for a post. Unimaginative and uninformative. But it may be appropriate. Mars is quite popular these days — what with all those rovers on Mars (Mars is 100% inhabited by rovers) and then there’s Elon Musk and his Starship project to build a colony on Mars. I support his goal to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

I was randomly looking through this blog and found a set of articles I had done in November 2013. I present them here for the benefit those who have missed reading them.

I have indexed the three related articles for your convenience.

1. The Importance of Prioritizing
2. Indian mission to Mars is a Waste
3. Mars Mission Revisited

The importance of Prioritizing and Sequencing

Nov 9th, 2013

Our choices determine our destiny
The prescription for individual success is simple to state, although like everything else of that ilk, it is not at all easy to follow. By individual success I don’t mean becoming incredibly rich and powerful or becoming the master of the universe but the rather mundane business of becoming what one is potentially capable of. That is, being the best one can be given one’s natural endowments and the external environment that the individual inhabits. Both the endowment (the mental and physical characteristics the individual is born with) and the environment (the place and time of the individual’s birth) are outside the individual’s choosing. They are a given; exogenous or externally determined; luck of the draw in the random draw of life.

Thus individual success is constrained by circumstances outside the individual’s control. However, given those constraints, the prescription to reach the potential is this: prioritize your goals and sequence your actions accordingly. Obviously that is not the most enlightening piece of advice you are likely to get but it is surprisingly accurate. Do the important bits first and do the less important bits only after you have taken care of the more important bits.

Prioritizing is important because we have limited resources, all of which have alternative uses. The most limiting of resources is time. If we had unlimited time, we would not have to choose between things that need to get done: we would eventually do them all. But even then we would have to sequence things since we cannot simultaneously do them all. When you do task A, you get the benefits of getting it done but you also forego the benefits of other tasks you could have done had you not done A. You forego the opportunity of the benefits of an alternative task B when you do A. That is what they call “opportunity cost” in economics lingo.

The important point here is that everything we do has an opportunity cost. Presumably here we are considering only those tasks that have positive net benefits; that is the benefits of doing them exceed their costs. It would be pointless to do things when the benefits don’t justify their costs. Now, one can always point to the net benefits of a task and argue that it is worth doing. But that argument fails because the question is not whether there are net benefits to doing something but whether that net benefit exceeds the net benefit of doing something else instead.

As individuals we are faced with choices every day and how we decide determines our life. Essayist Annie Dillard observed, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Our successes and failures are to a very large degree a consequence of the choices we make from moment to moment. Chance does play a part but is probably unbiased in that it equally aids success and failure.

At this very moment, I chose to write this instead of cleaning house or going out for a walk or reading or surfing the web or hanging out with a friend or a hundred other things I could be doing instead. I have consciously chosen to write about the Indian mission to Mars and I hope that I have chosen wisely.
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Indian mission to Mars is a Waste

Nov 10th, 2013

This thing about opportunity costs, prioritising and sequencing applies at the level of the collective as much as at the level of the individual. Society too has limited resources which have alternative uses. Based on its priorities, the government chooses how public resources are to be used. If it chooses correctly over an extended period, the outcome is a prosperous society, and vice versa. These are public policy choices and they powerfully determine the prosperity (or lack thereof) of the society, state or nation.

Considered in isolation, the decision to send a probe to Mars can be justified on the grounds that it will add to our knowledge about it. That’s a benefit. And of course there’s a cost. Whether the cost is less than what it would have cost another country or not is irrelevant. The salient question relates to the opportunity cost of the Mars mission because increasing our knowledge about Mars is not the only thing that needs to be done. Was it the most important thing India could have done at this time expending the same resources? I argue that it was not and that it was a bad decision.

Mars is not relevant to India. Whatever scientific discoveries the Indian probe makes will be quite irrelevant to the people of India — or any other people, for that matter. There can be no conceivable benefit to knowing its geology or atmospheric composition or whatever. True this knowledge will be of some use to someone in the future but right now aside from scientific curiosity, there’s little use of it here and now.

But isn’t research a good thing? Of course it is. However finding out things about Mars (or any other extraterrestrial body) is not basic research. Basic research is what advances scientific knowledge which in time helps people in figuring out the technology that have beneficial applications. The question isn’t whether India should do basic research or not; the question what kind of basic research. There are lots of areas where research and development is sorely required and missing. That should be the priority.

One can easily list dozens of areas where resources for research and development could be spent. Here’s one: solar power. India needs to do it because research will lead to technology that will be of use here and now, and in the future. Any resources spent in solar power research will have massive return on investments. The technology it develops will not only directly benefit it (lower energy bills) but also build capacity for research. India is favorably located with immense solar energy potential and that should be top priority for R&D for India. The reasons for investment in solar power research are too many to go into here but the primary reason is that it will directly lead to production and productivity growth — which is sorely needed if India is to stop being poor.

The point here is that there is an endless list of things which require publicly-funded research. Developing countries should focus on those fields that are likely to benefit them most urgently and in fields where other countries are not motivated to invest in. Poor countries should leave it to rich countries to do things like sending missions to Mars. They have a comparative advantage there and it is pointless competing with them. The resources they spend will be dictated by their priorities but the benefits — the knowledge about other planets — anyway will be part of the shared scientific knowledge of humanity.

One argument that is sometimes made has to do with national pride. India is the fourth country to send a probe to Mars, or some such thing. That goes into the “pride” column but what about that item in the “shame” column which says that India ranks 140-something in a list of nations and basic literacy? Now it can be argued that with the (relatively) small amounts that are spent in a Mars mission, you could not make a real dent in literacy. But that is incorrect.

India’s literacy problem needs to be solved urgently. A literate population is an absolute minimum if India is to grow economically and socially. The old methods of government schools have failed and are anyway outdated in a world of highly advanced information and communications technologies. Just spending a few tens of millions of dollars on that problem will yield enormous benefits. Gather a stellar group of researchers and practitioners who have the knowledge of that field and let them figure out a solution. That’s a research area for you.

Another area of research could be to figure out a better legal system. Courts are backlogged and I am certain that there are laws on the books that are idiotic, outdated and need to be weeded out. How about spending some public resources on them because there are public benefits.

How about doing a bit of research to figure out how best to design public toilets? It may not be the most exciting thing to read about in the newspapers — certainly not as sexy as sending probes to Mars — but it will have enormous public health benefits. The reason this is not on the radar of the policy makers is simply that they themselves have private toilets and cannot empathise with the plight of people who don’t have any toilets.

Here’s another research area: figure out what’s wrong with the Indian constitution and how to get it fixed so that it is sensible. As I see it, I think all the major ills that afflict India flow from a flawed constitution. One of the biggest flaws in it is that it is unreadable and — to a first approximation — nobody has read it. Over the last several years, I have asked at least 10,000 reasonably educated people and not one person has admitted to having read the constitution of India.

Or how about the mother of all research topics: why is India so desperately poor? If we could definitely know the causes of India’s continued failure to grow rapidly, we would be able to do something that will benefit the poorest of the poor. Right now there are a bunch of untutored ignoramuses determining public policy, people who would not know the first thing about what causes poverty or prosperity. How about hiring some of the best brains in the business from around the world and giving them the job of dispassionately figuring out what needs to be done?

All those and many other important topics need urgent attention in terms of public spending. If the government is not going to take the lead in funding research in these areas, who will? The private sector does not have the capacity nor the incentive to do so. It is a known fact that public funding is required in any field that has large positive benefits (positive externalities) for the public at large.

India has limited public resources and allocating them sensibly is necessary. For that India needs a well thought-out priority list. Choices have to be made because India cannot afford the opportunity cost of making bad choices. One day, if and when India becomes a middle-income country, maybe then India could indulge in the luxury of spending on irrelevant data gathering. But sending probes to the Moon or Mars is way down on the list right now and this kind of silliness should be called out strenuously and loudly.
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Mars Mission Revisited

Nov 19th, 2013

My column of November 10 criticizing the Indian mission to Mars met with some opposition which was not surprising. The push-back was predictable and I had anticipated the reasons that would be advanced and addressed them in the piece itself.

My argument against the mission – and other such ventures – was predicated on the simple notion that everything we do has an opportunity cost. Therefore it is simply not sufficient to point to only the benefits of a specific action to justify undertaking it; one has to compare those benefits with the benefits of alternate actions which would be precluded by the action.

That the mission has obvious benefits – building capacity, advancing knowledge, etc – is not in dispute. What needs examination is whether it is the best way to advance those objectives. Technological capacity, even in very narrowly defined fields, can be built through a variety of tasks, not just through one thing. Choosing among them is part of a sensible approach to maximising benefits.

Thus if the objective is to build launch capacity, missions to Mars cannot be the only way of doing it. Launch commercial satellites. Ferry cargo to the international space station. There are alternative ways.

One comment pointed out that “a tremendous push for advanced solar technology can come from a rover like object which would exclusively rely on solar panels for its activities under very rough conditions.” That bit illustrates the point I make about alternative means of building capacity. Sure, you can send a mission to Mars and figure out how to build robust solar technology. But why? It is not as if rough conditions cannot be duplicated on Earth.

Suppose you wanted to figure out the effects of 9,000 metre altitude on humans. Would you recommend an expedition to climb Mt Everest which would involve ferrying people and equipment there, or would you recommend duplicating the atmospheric conditions in a lab to do the study?

One comment said that he has not seen a more ignorant article. “The author clearly has no idea how scientific advances happen. From diapers to clean rooms used in making medicines all are by products of space research. 450 crore rupees is less than the cost of opening ceremony of the Delhi commonwealth games.” It is too common to conflate the scientific with the technological but I shall not address it here. I note the use of what can be called the “collateral” argument for doing something.

You can never do only one thing. It is sometimes termed as the First Law of Ecology. Meaning regardless of your primary or your only objective, anything you do will have consequences that you don’t intend or anticipate doing. Collateral damage is the term used when non-combatants are killed in battles.

But justifying something – even beneficial actions – on the collateral fallouts is inefficient and insufficient. Only if the benefits of doing something do not justify the costs, only then does one have to resort to adding up the supposed collateral benefits. It is weak position to have to defend.

Justifying the mission based on cost comparisons with something entirely different is hard to comprehend. Using the cost of the Common Wealth Games in New Delhi to justify the Mars mission is a surreal non sequitur.

Then there’s the soft-power argument made in one comment. “Mars mission is about having soft power . . . It is about giving a message we are equal to the developed countries in terms of research.” But how about making real progress in the lives of people instead of projecting soft power, whatever that is.

One commenter was quite blunt. “A useless cynical, intellectually challenged and unoriginal article. In line with patronizing Western attitude of how India should act. Such lack of self-confidence and misplaced priority will continue to delay maturity of Indian self-perception.” It’s the old “agent of the West” tactic to discredit the argument.

I am not interested in who advances the argument. I do not care about the provenance – if it makes sense, I would accept it. I would not immediately start throwing rocks in our harbor just because an enemy holds that throwing rocks in the harbor is a bad idea.

All sorts of arguments have been advanced by the proponents of the mission but nothing that I have not addressed in the column. However, I have not yet made the argument that is based on a general principle. It is this: if you are in favor of seeing something done, do it yourself. That is, vote with your pocket. If you want to spend on missions to Mars, put your money where your mouth is.

Why not let the government use tax revenues to do it? Because taxes should only fund those activities that are not discretionary – the provision of public goods and such other things that the market is even theoretically incapable of providing without public support.

If the society feels that extra-planetary missions are important, it can easily be arranged that a fund is created into which people can voluntarily contribute. This involves no coercion and is completely consistent with the freedom of individuals to spend their money as they see fit. For the important bits that must be done but will not be done by the market, there’s the government; for everything else, there’s MasterCard for you.
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