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Comment by notyourday | Hacker News Reader

I'm genuinely curious when was the last time someone voluntarily and constantly paid 250% of a cost of an equivalent product available from somewhere else?

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US government does strategic planning when they make large purchases. There are also a bunch of weird laws at play, so at times you might on one hand say that "the law requires" and on the other hand consider it voluntarily paying more, because it's the US government passing laws to restrict how its own purchases are made.

You also might pay $5 for a hot dog at a stadium when you can buy them for $1 outside, so there's that.

Popcorn or anything from the concessions at the movies.

> You also might pay $5 for a hot dog at a stadium when you can buy them for $1 outside, so there's that.

Is that why the concession sales at the stadiums are hurting?

I don't fault the guy, I'd basically be like "Sure, how many do you want per month? 5 year contract, early termination = full payment"

If you want to "save money", then go ask the Chinese factories to sell you the masks now.

His cost is simply too high. If he had the masks already produced when the states were willing to pay $0.30 per mask he would have made out like a bandit but he did not have them.

n=1 case here. When it comes to life-critical goods and supplies, I'll pay that premium and more. Globalization-sourced 3-ton jack stand is about $30. From US Jack Company, way more than 250% of that.

If there was accountability and an actual, real probability of collecting on judgements internationally, I'd have no problem with globalization. The reality is unless you are a deep-pocketed (absolute minimum 7th exponent club) actor, odds of actually getting all the way through the other side of collections are less than slim. It's still bad odds when sourcing with an "isolationist" bias, but you can knock a couple exponents off, and I'll take order of magnitude differentials all day long.

If there was a way to secure non-gamed reviews, then I'd be much more open to globalization-produced goods, but I haven't found that yet. My current rough proxy for quality is to source commercial-rated duty cycle goods if they are available, research on trades discussion forums for discussion about the manufacturer, and work up an evaluation from there. But that's really time-consuming. No way do I now "trust the market" to shake out shady players.

7th exponent club?

$10^7, rich enough to bankroll $10 million on a serious enough lawsuit project to have a reasonable chance of actually collecting upon.

What is the value of a life-saving commodity? How much would you pay for 2-year mask features in March 2020?

$0.00 because even though the news has been telling me there were no N95 masks anywhere there were tons of them in NYC. They were just not at the "approved vendors".

When the market's been flooded by Chinese masks purporting to be N95 but do not actually meet the N95 specification... is sticking to a trusted supply chain really that foolish for situations where you really need the product to perform?

There was absolutely no guarantees that the masks sold via authorized vendors met any of those specifications. The authorized vendors simply happened to be entities that jumped through the ridiculous hoops established by the different procurement organizations to qualify a vendor.

NYC had street vendors selling legitimate masks bought for example via supplier that normally would be selling to Home Depot, except home depot decided to do its patriotic duty ( i was amazed when they announced it ) and stopped selling N95 masks all together.

For example this is the stuff from a qualified vendor today:

https://nypost.com/2020/09/12/principals-rip-nyc-doe-for-sup...

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