Archaeology:
Large sculptures:
Biblical manuscripts (there's some overlap with archaeology here) :
The Large Hadron Collider:
Food stamps:
And many more examples could be given, of things which upset some people because so much money is spent on them.
The thing is: the number of people who are upset about one or more of these cases of spending is probably much smaller than the number who are upset about all of them. Take each one of those things. Take somebody who is angry because so much money is spent on them. In each one of those cases, you could find somebody else who knows a lot about the thing upon which the money is spent, who could explain to the other person all of the good things about that thing.
Hopefully you're way ahead of me and talking to each other already. But if one of the things I've mentioned above really burns you up because so much money is spent on it, I bet that if you found an expert on that one thing and were quiet for a little while and listened to the expert talk about the thing, you might be amazed at how much it affects your attitude, and how much you learn, and how interesting it is, and how in many cases the money is going much further than you thought and maybe even it's admirable how far they've managed to stretch a buck, and just maybe you won't be so angry anymore.
And it certainly goes the other way around too: between all of those things, I'm sure that many of you are pretty knowledgeable about at least one, and could really affect the thinking of someone who's currently very angry about that one thing because they think it's a waste. So many of us have so much to teach so many others. Don't you agree?
Or maybe I'm just living in a dream world.
