Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!uakari!indri!ames!skipper!shafer From: shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) Newsgroups: sci.space Subject: Re: Don't Mess with NASA (afterburners) Message-ID: Date: 24 Jul 89 19:06:39 GMT References: <8907201027.AA07833@osteocyber.ortho.hmc.psu.edu> <1989Jul20.184051.19979@utzoo.uucp> <1989Jul21.193401.19303@utzoo.uucp> <2335@itivax.iti.org> Sender: news@skipper.dfrf.nasa.gov Organization: NASA Dryden, Edwards, Cal. Lines: 50 In-reply-to: aws@vax3.iti.org's message of 24 Jul 89 17:54:41 GMT In article <2335@itivax.iti.org> aws@vax3.iti.org (Allen W. Sherzer) writes: >In article shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov (Mary Shafer) writes: >>Since a private market for high-performance, jet "fighter" aircraft >>does exist, why is this market _so_ small? >Price. Exactly. This is precisely what I've been saying. >>Why is there essentially only one entry in the market? >There are more than one. I know of people who own F-86's. A company in >Addison Tx. has imported some Alpha jets which it sells (for about 2M >each). A company in CA inports MIG-19's from China and is attempting to >get permission to import MIG-21's. The Alpha and Mig-21 will do better >than mach 1. >Finally, although not jets, there are a lot of WWII fighters out there. Yes, but these are _all_ government-funded. Some of the members of this discussion keep saying that the government is bad, that nothing produced for the government is any good, and that free enterprise is the answer. I was pointing out that the free-enterprise "fighter" was a dismal failure, contrary to the arguments of the free-enterprise-only enthusiasts. >>Maybe the market has decided that this >>isn't an appropriate place to allocate resources? >The great thing about a free market it that it isn't monolithic. There >is nobody allocating resources. "The market" is a term for all the businesses and consumers (real and potential) of a product. Thus I was saying that if this were such a great business opportunity, some capitalist would be out there building "fighters" and making a lot of money. Since that isn't happening, maybe this isn't a great business opportunity. So the market isn't allocating resources to it. This assumes, of course, that there is no external effect, such as legal prohibition, on the market. Back to Econ 1A! :-) -- M F Shafer shafer@elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov NASA Ames Research Center arpa!elxsi.dfrf.nasa.gov!shafer Dryden Flight Research Facility Of course I don't speak for NASA