Physics Today gleefully notes:
On 18 May, however, the science and research minister’s plans to quit CERN were quashed. The country’s Social Democratic chancellor, Werner Faymann, said that the ministers of his party would not vote to withdraw, which means that the necessary unanimous vote would be impossible, and that the issue would not go to Parliament. “If an agreement can’t be reached, things stay as they are,” Hahn acknowledged after meeting with the chancellor. He added that the debate would be a stepping-off point for a close look at the country’s participation in international projects.
Indeed. It is time for Austria (and other countries) to look at these international projects from more objective, calculated point of view. “Solidarity” is an excuse statists and communists use to get others to act against their best interest. The one moral question anyone should be asking is, “What’s in it for me?”
Let’s see what’s in it for Austria. As the article notes, Austria is contributing only 2% of CERN’s budget. Let’s suppose CERN accomplishes everything it promised and more. It finds Higgs boson before Fermilab. It finds the massive supersymmetric partners. And it finds additional data and particles that existing theories and proposals cannot explain, jump starting second golden age of particle physics. It is the greatest success of the 21st century physics.
How much of that accomplishment will be credited to Austria? After all, Austria only contributed 2%. Will anyone from Austria be getting a Nobel Prize for that work, when Austria’s only contributing 2% into the effort?
On the other hand, the money that’s going into CERN is 70% of Austria’s funding for international collaboration in science. If you ever had a choice, would you rather commit a majority of your investment portfolio to become a minority stockholder in a startup company that could just as easily fail as succeed? Or would you rather commit that resource in another, perhaps smaller effort where you could at least hold a controlling stock?
Austria contributing to CERN has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Austria contributing to CERN makes even less sense than US propping up UN (US at least gets a publicity front for all those internationally-minded morons). Austria, if her leaders were not complete morons, should pull out of CERN. Solidarity be damned.
