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Is this anything but the kind of pearl clutching that appeals to a certain kind of war hawk? Is like, oh no demand for a thing went up and supply didn’t preexi

Is this anything but the kind of pearl clutching that appeals to a certain kind of war hawk? Is like, oh no demand for a thing went up and supply didn’t preexist… if for some reason supply does absolutely nothing, we’ll be in real trouble many years down the road! You see the same thing with minerals (lithium for batteries, rare earths for magnets) and all sorts of things. Yes, indeed demand changes for things and supply doesn’t respond immediately. Come back when there’s actually a reason to be worried. It’s the department of defense, if there was actually a shortage that would have an impact, it would be fixed quite quickly.

aidenn0 3y ago
1. This particular article is on an anti-monopoly blog, not a war-hawk blog. It may be an attempt to pander to war-hawks to engage with antitrust law in the US, but I thought I'd point it out. 2. TFA specifically addresses your point about supply & demand. It's not that supply is lagging demand it's that it's lagging demand by a large amount. The article uses the (slightly wrong[1]) example of orders for the Stinger missile replacements estimated to take 5 years. 3. The general thesis of BIG is that the level of M&As we have now are anti-competitive and harmful to workers, consumers, and the US Economy as a whole, but in the post-Regan era the government has been either supportive or complacent. This article is an attempt to show further evidence of this, using the GAO's authority as an example of the first half and the DOD's response as an example of the second. 1: The linked article is about replacing the Stinger missile with a new short-range SAM, not about just building more Stinger missiles as the sentence linking it implies. It is true, however, that in the interim we have no new stock of either Stingers or their proposed replacement.

aidenn0 3y ago

1. This particular article is on an anti-monopoly blog, not a war-hawk blog. It may be an attempt to pander to war-hawks to engage with antitrust law in the US, but I thought I'd point it out. 2. TFA specifically addresses your point about supply & demand. It's not that supply is lagging demand it's that it's lagging demand by a large amount. The article uses the (slightly wrong[1]) example of orders for the Stinger missile replacements estimated to take 5 years. 3. The general thesis of BIG is that the level of M&As we have now are anti-competitive and harmful to workers, consumers, and the US Economy as a whole, but in the post-Regan era the government has been either supportive or complacent. This article is an attempt to show further evidence of this, using the GAO's authority as an example of the first half and the DOD's response as an example of the second. 1: The linked article is about replacing the Stinger missile with a new short-range SAM, not about just building more Stinger missiles as the sentence linking it implies. It is true, however, that in the interim we have no new stock of either Stingers or their proposed replacement.