US News

2016 readers

44 users here now

News from within the empire - From a leftist perspective

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml

The U.S. Can Afford a Bigger Military. We Just Can’t Build It. (www.wsj.com)

submitted 9 months ago by yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to c/us_news@lemmygrad.ml

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

[–] lil_tank@lemmygrad.ml 45 points 9 months ago (4 children)

The US slowly realising that bank notes don't just morph into objects

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 30 points 9 months ago (2 children)

One of my favorite stories of the year has to be EU's attempt to convert money into artillery shells. They allocated a bunch of money to this and thought that shells would magically appear. Instead they created a situation where there's a limited supply of a commodity with a market flush with cash, and as anybody with even a modicum of economic understanding could've told them this resulted in prices going through the roof. So shells went from around 2k per shell to 8k per shell. 😂

In October, NATO’s senior military officer, Adm. Rob Bauer, said that the price for one 155mm shell had risen from 2,000 euros ($2,171) at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion to 8,000 euros ($8,489.60).

The west is run by literal evil clowns.

[–] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 22 points 9 months ago

Hey, it means that GDP got bigger! Who needs real things if line went up?

[–] PanArab@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Were EU governments bidding against one another?

[–] yogthos@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 9 months ago

I'm guessing companies just jacked up the price and the governments wrote blank cheques to them. I imagine corruption is likely a factor here too.

[–] usernamesaredifficul@hexbear.net 30 points 9 months ago (1 children)

look understanding that things don't just magically appear at the shop is marxism

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 10 points 9 months ago

that is very succinctly putting into words as to why I'm going crazy at my job

[–] sooper_dooper_roofer@hexbear.net 20 points 9 months ago

but look at all this paper GDP (not even paper it's just 1s and 0s on some computer) we have over China

[–] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 17 points 9 months ago

I feel like, a while ago, we've entered some weird sort of alienation from work event horizon where the people at the top absolutely forgot you need "person who does stuff" eventually. Like it's so many levels and excel spreadsheets and white papers and what have you removed the idea that the people who produce things aren't some aetheric blob but like, actual people doing things, is forgotten.

Only when the last process has been streamlined, the final KPI hit, and the final downsizing accomplished, will we realize we cannot build from money or something