It's a sign that... national security is at odds with market efficiency. Of course doing things less efficiently costs money, and if you don't spend that money, it doesn't get done.
[EDIT] To be clear, I don't have a strong opinion on whether it remains a good idea to keep this act around.
There is no limit to inefficiency. Maintaining entrenched corporatist monopolies via corrupt regulatory capture is long run much worse for national security.
This is a pretty extreme position. That some inefficiency is necessary for national security reasons is about as close to settled as anything gets in economics/political-economy, though there's plenty of room to disagree over how much.
Inefficiencies beget inefficiencies. The money gained by those who benefit from the inefficiencies will be reinvested into developing more inefficiencies. Maintaining an efficient system requires constant vigilance.
The US is a precarious hegemon, for all of the inefficiency it has invested into the MIC it doesn’t seemed to have gained very much.
Not everything is about maximizing profitability. Efficient markets are pretty good at optimizing around steady-state systems, but they are profoundly bad at maintaining readiness for cataclysmic events. Yet cataclysmic events happen and we are obliged to prepare for them.
If we let corporations run everything, they'd sell of our medical stockpiles, build levees exactly one inch above the waterline, and sell all of our weapons to the highest bidder.
> If we let corporations run everything, they'd sell of our medical stockpiles, build levees exactly one inch above the waterline, and sell all of our weapons to the highest bidder.
I can’t tell if these were intended to be examples of things that have happened?
Capitalism is indeed the god, and the atheists and fence sitters find it a bit depressing.
