Building two is hardly twice the cost. The design and development work has surely got to be more costly than fabrication, assembly and installation.

Not that this nit-pick changes the nature of the discussion.

1) My comment wasn't meant as a serious critique of the situation

2) Econ isn't my forte anyway

C) You have my permission to stop being pedantic and laugh

D) I switched from numbers to letters, lest anyone develop the impression I am at all serious

:) When you make bullet lists like this, you can throw in a smiley emoticon and it will confuse at least a handful of people

6) Hope this made your Monday a little brighter :)

That's the point of the joke.

In the real world you can build two bits of identical high tech equipment for little more than the cost of one - in military procurement the normal rational rules of supply and demand don't apply

I'm with you on this Brad. This is also the first thing came to mind.

Same here! I thought "Just like in Contact!!" :)

Lumping it all under "government spending" is burying the lede a bit.

I'm not sure I follow. I'm not telling a story here, just pointing out a funny tie in from a piece of pop culture. There's probably something more subtle that I'm missing, because I'm dense like that :)

And that pop culture was written by Carl Sagan, who is no stranger to this subject!