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Comment by crvdgc | Hacker News Reader

A cold war joke goes: The US does have planned economy and its name is military contracts.

One of the core responsibilities of the state is to protect itself. Not sure how you don't have this planned apart from anarchy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Pretty simple, you don't pay a private enterprise to develop it, instead you develop it yourself after hiring the best people.

At least that's how it was done back in the "golden years", post WW2, during which inequality was quite stable etc

The US government did not build bombers, ICBMs, or even the Apollo vehicles. All of those were specified by agencies and contracted out to the same contractors that exist today. I think the last thing the US "manufactured" was ammunition during the Civil War, as it owned a few shot towers, but even the vast majority of those were privately-owned and contracted by the US Army.

I heard that the US government nationalized defense contractors during WWI. Is that not the case?

I was misinformed, thanks for correcting me.

(Though I was thinking more of the research/planning vs actually mass production, that you're taking about. Especially as this discussion is about such as case too, considering it's software)

The US government didn’t build and plan Lockheed planes. Not in WW2 and not now. Not sure about other manufacturers.

I'd prefer the version where the government states a goal and a market based process is used to determine who can provide best for that goal.

Imagine if the government said no food stamps, we'll just run our own grocery stores to provide for the less fortunate and we'll hire the best people.

You see the difference? Do you really think government run corporations would be able to design better military defense systems?

It's not that outrageous. There are government-run liquor stores all over the country, and even government-run grocery stores, most notably at every military base. The image here of one seems like a totally normal grocery store: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Navy_020813-N-3642E-50...

I don't think the government should be running liquor stores either

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