From: Mark J. Blair (ke6myk_mvlist@sbcglobal.net)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 12:52:40 PDT
Steve Grammont wrote:
> Like I said... if my company was to not receive assurances that our
> product would be kept within the military, fine. We could agree to that.
> But the government would then have to foot the bill for all the consumer
> sales we would lose through the arrangement. That means probably an 8
> fold increase in what we charge the government.
I don't understand where the 8x multiplier comes from. It seems to me that if
you sell one widget to the government, that's at most one widget that you
wouldn't sell to another consumer, many years later, after the government has
beaten the tar out of that widget and released its well-used remains in a
surplus auction. Even with quantity discounts for a big government purhcase
vs. a bunch of small civilian purchases, I don't see how an 8x price
multiplier is reasonably justified. I always thought that the "time value of
money" worked the other way around, i.e. "give me $1 now for the $8 that I
might not make 10 years from now", vs. "give me $8 now for the $1 that I might
not make 10 years from now". But then, I'm just an engineer; I don't
understand economics.
-- Mark J. Blair, NF6X <ke6myk@sbcglobal.net> PGP 2.6.2 public key available from http://www.keyserver.net/ Web page: http://www.qsl.net/ke6myk/
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