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This doesn't seem too different than John Deere tractors, which weigh heavily in most right to repair discussions.

Someone 1y ago
I think the essential difference is that, with John Deere, you don’t have the choice between a repairable and a non-repairable tractor. Here, the navy (very likely. Even if this provider didn’t give them the option, they could have gone with a different one) had a choice.
- __egb__ 1y ago
  Did the Navy really have a choice at the time, though? Politically, I mean. Yes, the Navy can select a higher bid as long as there is justification, and here the justification is long-term value and readiness…but a significant portion of the voting public is incapable of properly weighing long-term versus short-term effects. All they’d understand—and they’d be helped along to this conclusion by plenty of politicians who just want to use the situation to score points—is, “The government paid twice as much for an aircraft carrier than it needed to!”
  - mistrial9 1y ago
    nice way to blame "stupid public" for this internal Navy contract
  - close04 1y ago
    Maybe they even saw handing over to a provider all repair responsibilities as a major advantage. No need to have this capability in the crew with the associated logistics, and the accountability is also outsourced. This comes at a cost but looking around at comparable outsourcing situations, everyone follows the same line of thinking. Sell my responsibility for (someone else’s) money.
    - omniglottal 1y ago
      Maybe they are an aircraft carrier that is deployed in places that no reasonable human can expect a service technician to visit, and this level of imbecility should generally be avoided.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    The voting public never sees these costs. They are sometimes told about it, tenth-hand, such as the fabled $10,000-hammer and the gold toilet seat. Congress itself sees these costs, or more precisely, teams working for congressmembers see them. Congress members approve bills that are not lowest-cost when there is personal benefit for their careers: pork-barrel. It's very hard to justify not-lowest-cost without a pork-barrel angle.
Kon-Peki 1y ago
Deere has a massive service network that makes it extremely rare for a farmer to get stranded during planting or harvesting. To keep this network around year after year, they lock people into using it and charge a lot of money. The Navy should probably contract with Deere, as they’d probably think they’re getting a good deal.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  And Caterpillar relies on customer loyalty, based on best-in-class service. Caterpillar has been known to rent equipment from their competitor and fly it by helicopter into remote mining locations while their equipment is inoperable. (Admittedly, mining is not a John Deere market, but this is about Caterpillar's service attitude.) John Deere's model is successful, but ultimately monopolistic.
  - Kon-Peki 1y ago
    The Caterpillar model might work better for the Navy. Not a huge number of ships, used year-round. I’m not condoning Deere, BTW. Just pointing out that there are tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of farms that get very busy twice a year and much less busy the rest of the time. Having the capacity to make sure a farmer gets service quickly during those busy times is really hard. And expensive. If anyone had a better idea on how to do it they’d be a billionaire. I mean, there probably aren’t enough helicopters available for Deere to do what Caterpillar does.

I think the essential difference is that, with John Deere, you don’t have the choice between a repairable and a non-repairable tractor. Here, the navy (very likely. Even if this provider didn’t give them the option, they could have gone with a different one) had a choice.

__egb__ 1y ago
Did the Navy really have a choice at the time, though? Politically, I mean. Yes, the Navy can select a higher bid as long as there is justification, and here the justification is long-term value and readiness…but a significant portion of the voting public is incapable of properly weighing long-term versus short-term effects. All they’d understand—and they’d be helped along to this conclusion by plenty of politicians who just want to use the situation to score points—is, “The government paid twice as much for an aircraft carrier than it needed to!”
- mistrial9 1y ago
  nice way to blame "stupid public" for this internal Navy contract
- close04 1y ago
  Maybe they even saw handing over to a provider all repair responsibilities as a major advantage. No need to have this capability in the crew with the associated logistics, and the accountability is also outsourced. This comes at a cost but looking around at comparable outsourcing situations, everyone follows the same line of thinking. Sell my responsibility for (someone else’s) money.
  - omniglottal 1y ago
    Maybe they are an aircraft carrier that is deployed in places that no reasonable human can expect a service technician to visit, and this level of imbecility should generally be avoided.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  The voting public never sees these costs. They are sometimes told about it, tenth-hand, such as the fabled $10,000-hammer and the gold toilet seat. Congress itself sees these costs, or more precisely, teams working for congressmembers see them. Congress members approve bills that are not lowest-cost when there is personal benefit for their careers: pork-barrel. It's very hard to justify not-lowest-cost without a pork-barrel angle.

Kon-Peki 1y ago

Deere has a massive service network that makes it extremely rare for a farmer to get stranded during planting or harvesting. To keep this network around year after year, they lock people into using it and charge a lot of money. The Navy should probably contract with Deere, as they’d probably think they’re getting a good deal.

IAmBroom 1y ago
And Caterpillar relies on customer loyalty, based on best-in-class service. Caterpillar has been known to rent equipment from their competitor and fly it by helicopter into remote mining locations while their equipment is inoperable. (Admittedly, mining is not a John Deere market, but this is about Caterpillar's service attitude.) John Deere's model is successful, but ultimately monopolistic.
- Kon-Peki 1y ago
  The Caterpillar model might work better for the Navy. Not a huge number of ships, used year-round. I’m not condoning Deere, BTW. Just pointing out that there are tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands?) of farms that get very busy twice a year and much less busy the rest of the time. Having the capacity to make sure a farmer gets service quickly during those busy times is really hard. And expensive. If anyone had a better idea on how to do it they’d be a billionaire. I mean, there probably aren’t enough helicopters available for Deere to do what Caterpillar does.