The Ziegfeld Follies ran on Broadway for decades, with stars like Will Rogers and Fanny Brice. This show is about a different kind of folly. In the Bible Jesus Christ says, “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?”
A modern folly was the Superconducting Supercollider. It promised to revolutionize high-energy physics, perhaps finding the theoretical Higgs particle or the existence of dark matter. Builders dug 14 miles of the 54-mile tunnel around Waxahachie, Texas, but then Congress cut off funding in 1993.
Fingers pointed in all directions. President George Bush (the elder) sought investor nations like Japan. But when lobbying Prime Minister Kiichi Miazawa at a formal dinner, Bush got sick and barfed all over him. That was a bad omen.
Then the budget leaped from four billion dollars to eight billion, then twelve billion, exposing the original estimate as a fib. Due to rising budget deficits and the end of the Cold War, Congress now prioritized fiscal discipline. But the Supercollider’s undoing was more about pure politics.
The SSC was awarded to Texas, home of President George Bush and House Speaker Jim Wright. After work began, financial scandals forced Wright from office, then Bush was defeated for re-election. Their successors lacked their enthusiasm for the Texas project.
Economist Atin Basuchoudhary explains that when 25 states were in the running, House approval was strong. But as the choice narrowed to eight finalists, then one winner, members from losing districts began changing their votes. In 1993 the Supercollider died. Many years later, Europe’s Large Hadron Collider discovered the Higgs particle, leaving us with nothing but a hole in the ground and 2.4 billion dollars wasted. Now that’s a folly.
I’m Jeff Gentry
Best reference:
Basuchoudhary, A., Pecorino, P., & Shughart, W. F. (1999). Reversal of Fortune: The Politics and Economics of the Superconducting Supercollider. Public Choice, 100(3/4), 185–201.
Dumb Ideas that Changed the World copyright 2025 by Jeff Gentry. All rights reserved
