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A comment on Our principles. Parent comment

Re:Our principles by torginus on Monday April 27, 2026 @06:33PM (#47928288)
I don't want to judge the US armed forces, so the following is a hypothetical - I heard the rumor that some procurement guy shared the US Army paid about $10k for a set of power tools for mechanics, which were commercially available, and together cost about $1k.

Now I learned from ChatGPT that the US Army has about 100k mechanics, and assuming every one gets such a set, and the extra $9k is pure profit, then the guy making the sale gets about $900mm out of it - a staggering amount, but not commercially compared to what big companies rake in, and financially not very sophisticated.

Also I'd like to stress that the above scenario is conjecture - I have far too little knowledge of the actual specifics of the org to just make such an accusation openly.

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Re:Our principles by Eisenstein on Tuesday April 28, 2026 @01:19AM (#47930666)
$1k for the tools, $5k for dealing with the paperwork, $2k for having to stock 4,000 sets for years because they need to have direct replacements forever in order to make them standard issue, $500 for needing a different version for the army, navy, air force, and coast guard, and $500 profit.
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