The idea is if you can spend money on a bomb, you have some money that flows through a production chain, giving people employment, and at the end you get an item (the bomb) and you destroy it. It would be strictly better if you did anything else with the money, that resulted in the same employment spending but you'd have less value left at the end to destroy. But say that you live in a militarized society where it's easy to agree to fund bombs but very hard to agree to fund social services. Then the bomb may be your only option, and it's still better for your economy to build the bomb than not.
It's the broken-window effect, if your political system is captured by a glassmakers' lobby.
What does "economically beneficial" means in this context?
I agree that some measures of economy (GDP? unemployment?) would get better in this scenario, but the whole effort wouldn't serve any other purpose than to increase those values, making it a little pointless.
I guess if this is what you're trying to say, then it is indeed an indictment of how we do economy.
Yeah I guess I view the economy as a system for maximizing value. This largely happens through consumptive spending. So this entire thing is a weird backdoor mechanism for giving people money for consumptive spending and burning their labor in exchange.
Could you just give people the money without burning their labor in spectacular explosions? Yes. But we don't. :shrugs:
Wow this is basically Keynesian gold digging but perverted to an even higher degree. Keynes idea was that we burry bank notes and tell people to dig them up as proof of work. Of course Keynes mentioned building houses and the like would be a better idea but if the political environment wouldn't allow it (guess what hasn't changed?) then any crackpot idea that brings money into the hands of those desperate for employment would be better than doing nothing. I guess you can take this idea too far. If the political environment got so bad the only way to justify further employment is (preparing for)war we should take a step back and really think about what we should be doing instead.
I mean sure, but that's contingent, not required. For instance, imagine two nations going to war with combat robots that can be perfectly recycled. The only effect is direct consumption of labor. However, due to the militarized society, the labor would be worthless otherwise.
It's the broken-window effect, if your political system is captured by a glassmakers' lobby.