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The economics of the atomic bomb
The atomic bombs were the product of an industrial effort which cost just under $2bn ($20 bn in 1996 dollars). One billion dollars to destroy a city which would have been destroyed at minimal additional cost by one conventional raid represented an awful lot of 'bucks per bang.' Another way to look at it is that it cost $3bn to manufacture the 4,000 or so B-29s which were used exclusively in long-range operations against Japan, including as atomic bombers...Another index was that the total cost of the atomic bombs was the equivalent of making one-third more tanks or five times more heavy guns.
That is intriguing but it misses two points. First, the cost of making subsequent atomic bombs is lower. Second, atomic bombs have superior signaling power about the willingness to destroy. That excerpt is from David Edgerton's The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 19, 2007 at 07:26 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Those last two points are rather important.
Posted by: theCoach at Jan 19, 2007 8:40:57 AM
Doesn't the use of an atomic bomb potentially save the loss of lots of human capital from more conventional ways of destroying cities? At least in the short run, static world.
Posted by: Mike at Jan 19, 2007 8:48:02 AM
It also signalled that the US was capable of substituting capital for labor. An invasion with thousands of planes and tanks would have cost hundreds of thousands of Americans to lose their lives. Many Japanese believed that the US would not follow through on an invasion of the mainland if it meant a high enough level of casualties. (And judging by postwar US military ventures, they weren't completely wrong...) The bomb -- with the implicit possibility of dropping lots of these on Japan -- was a clear, game-ending signal.
Posted by: jn at Jan 19, 2007 9:19:02 AM
I wonder if David Edgerton is related to Harold "Doc" Edgerton, the legendary WWII scientist.
Posted by: Michael H. at Jan 19, 2007 9:22:51 AM
The numbers I have regarding the cost of an invasion:
Est US military casualties: 1,000,000
Est Japanese military casualties: 1,000,000
Est Japanese civilian casualties: 2,000,000
Note also the limited effect of conventional bombings in Germany. The pictures we see are the result of WEEKS of coordinated bombing runs.
Someone who would talk about the cost of the bomb without talking about the loss of human life that was averted has a rather alien preference set.
Posted by: Nathan Zook at Jan 19, 2007 10:24:28 AM
I intended to make the same point about the contrast with human lives saved. I bet there were a good deal of American soldiers who were happy to see those bucks spent on that bang.
Posted by: Trevor at Jan 19, 2007 11:59:00 AM
At that point in time, it was obvious that Japan had lost the war: Japan's military government was then fighting for regime survival.
In that context, the atomic bomb posed a personal, existential threat to the top level of the military government, in a way that conventional warfare did not.
Posted by: Cyrus at Jan 19, 2007 12:06:34 PM
Also, by developing the first atomic weapon you give yourself the option of developing other weapons later that depend on the technology. Given that the following weapons are likely to be supremely powerful, this is not a trivial point.
Posted by: Nathan Whitehead at Jan 19, 2007 12:30:34 PM
There's also the cost of finding out that someone else developed the bomb first and you don't have it.
Posted by: Jon Biggar at Jan 19, 2007 12:55:50 PM
There are two types of bombs: U-235 and Plutonium. Plutonium weapons are much cheaper, but harder to make. Ernest O. Lawrence blew a big chunk of money developing the U-235 bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima. I guess he really loved his cyclotrons, ignoring him would have saved several hundred million in development costs.
Posted by: jmalizee at Jan 19, 2007 1:08:11 PM
"atomic bombs have superior signaling power about the willingness to destroy"
Beautifully put.
Posted by: ben at Jan 19, 2007 3:35:33 PM
Also, there was an element of bluff.
We only had the two bombs plus the one we tested. The Japanese didn't know that. For a few billion dollars we put an image of a few dozen superweapons in the mind of the enemy. The weapons may have been cost-effective when amortized over the imaginary weapons that the enemy responded to by surrendering.
-dk
Posted by: Dick King at Jan 19, 2007 3:44:37 PM
In that day it seems like the government was more interested in saving lives and creating a fearful precedent. I shudder to think what todays parameters might be for using such weapons. Possibly it would only take the proof of profitability and plausible deniability.
Posted by: W.D. Reed at Jan 20, 2007 12:04:30 AM
The atomic bomb is an obvious and tremendous 'productivity' improvement,
where productivity has to be understood as the amount of people killed
per one soldier at the front or cities destroyed per bomber.
It's a whole different defense situation, if your enemy needs to send only
a single bomber with a 12 man crew to destroy a city instead of hundreds
of planes with thousands of men.
So what the US has done was to substitute front-office workers (soldiers)
with some back-office workers and intellectual property capital.
Posted by: Oskar Shapley at Jan 21, 2007 10:05:12 AM
This to me is a classic problem that our government has. Which is more important saving money or saving lives. Just like a deadly disease the government have to decide whether finding a cure for the disease is worth it money wise. They might say that it cost too much money because finding a cure is more expensive that a few people dying.
Posted by: marcus at Jan 21, 2007 3:42:53 PM
This to me is a classic problem that our government has. Which is more important saving money or saving lives. Just like a deadly disease the government have to decide whether finding a cure for the disease is worth it money wise. They might say that it cost too much money because finding a cure is more expensive that a few people dying.
Posted by: marcus at Jan 21, 2007 3:43:57 PM
It seems to me that the United States is always in the middle to two big controversies: Economics and the Military. There is so many different opinions about these topics that it will never be settled. Some think that the United States should have not made the bomb and saved to money so that the economy would be better as a whole, but yet there would have been more man to man fighthing which would have caused more US casulaties. Lets think about about.... US spending more money, which would affect the US citizens by what...a raise in taxes, to make the bomb or the US losing thousands of troops to go there and fight?
Posted by: La'Tasha at Jan 21, 2007 8:00:50 PM
I think that the goverment should focus on more important things rather then bombs that cost the U.S billions of dollars. We have more important things to think about(education,schools) instead of blowing up places. When we build new bombs, and guns that just seems like we are preparing fot the worst in my mind, and we should all want peace amongts each nation. So, is 2 billions dollars really worth putting towards a bombs and guns?????
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