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No, it’s purely economics. Manufacturing is really tough to get right and producing at scale is a monstrous problem. There is no hobby that teaches you the exac

No, it’s purely economics. Manufacturing is really tough to get right and producing at scale is a monstrous problem. There is no hobby that teaches you the exact process for creating a stinger missile using 247 custom parts assembled in 36 steps in a highly choreographed process of man and machine. To build even the most basic thing you need a team of highly experienced people who have been doing that job for a decade. Keeping those production line active while producing no parts is a crazy expensive proposition. There was a post that hit the front page recently about how the us airforce paid $50k for an airplane trashcan. It costs that much not because the raw materials + direct labor to create it cost that much, but instead because you have to pay for the 30+ people involved to restart that product line again for a super small batch.

gaze 3y ago
No, it costs $50k because they can charge that much. Just like the way everything else is priced.
- vajrabum 3y ago
  I don't know about the trashcan but I do know about Lockheed's infamous $500 toilet seat. In that case it was hand fabricated fibreglass that fit over the top of the tank where waste was held and what you would call the seat was attached to it. It actually cost more than $500 to manufacture but they got so much bad publicity that they dropped the price.
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
> instead because you have to pay This is the thing, you don't actually have to pay to get "a" suitable trashcan. You do have to pay to get that exact one and be able to prove it. Certifications, approvals and so on carry significant costs. And significant benefits, like making aviation extremely safe, and standardisation allowing interchangeability and cooperation. When the system ossifies over time, plenty of people are more than happy to simply follow the rules in their silos rather than think about whether there's a better way. And, indeed, this sometimes is the best way rather than doing something clever, expedient and inventive that gets your name included in a NTSB report in 15 years' time.

gaze 3y ago

No, it costs $50k because they can charge that much. Just like the way everything else is priced.

vajrabum 3y ago
I don't know about the trashcan but I do know about Lockheed's infamous $500 toilet seat. In that case it was hand fabricated fibreglass that fit over the top of the tank where waste was held and what you would call the seat was attached to it. It actually cost more than $500 to manufacture but they got so much bad publicity that they dropped the price.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

> instead because you have to pay This is the thing, you don't actually have to pay to get "a" suitable trashcan. You do have to pay to get that exact one and be able to prove it. Certifications, approvals and so on carry significant costs. And significant benefits, like making aviation extremely safe, and standardisation allowing interchangeability and cooperation. When the system ossifies over time, plenty of people are more than happy to simply follow the rules in their silos rather than think about whether there's a better way. And, indeed, this sometimes is the best way rather than doing something clever, expedient and inventive that gets your name included in a NTSB report in 15 years' time.