DND confirms budget for new Arctic vehicles could be as high as $1 billion (ottawacitizen.com)

submitted 2 days ago by NightOwl@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 18 hours ago

The whole point is to produce a relatively small amount of expensive products with minimal capital investment, not to take advantage of economies of scale to produce large amounts of equipment efficiently.

Lacking your psychic powers, we're going to need a citation showing that's "the whole point".

[-] GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 1 points 16 hours ago

Milton Friedman said it most succinctly in Capitalism and Freedom (1962): "there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits." He argued in short that a corporation's sole responsibility is to increase shareholder value, and this argument is the foundation of modern business practives.

If a defence contractor were to produce affordable (i.e. low margin) products, they would be shirking their holy duty to the shareholders, the money would be invested elsewhere, and they would go out of business. China can get away with doing it since they just have a state-owned company do it cheaply, but that's authoritarian (bad). We, being principled democratic states, can only buy what the free market has to sell.