No, we had to bid against you too. And France, and Italy, and Spain, and Germany, etc.
Right. So your contention is that... a single state didn't bid as much as the UK, and therefore all 50 states bidding against eachother in aggregate cannot cause more impact than the UK?
For the same reason the UK bought more ventilators than it needed, a fear that it wouldn't be enough later.
That doesn't answer the question. The US did not need to import ventilators. It was not competing with the UK to get ventilators into the country. So how did the UK's order cause the US to be unable to mobilise the ventilators
it already had?
You literally haven't, because if you did you would recognize that over 75% of any supply chain is in private industry since we live in a liberal society. So you wouldn't have brought up supply chains at all in the face of government, you'd only talk about one thing.
Aaaaaand we're back to your refusal to recognise the government's involvement in tendering
government contracts to private entities.
I wasn't defending so much as stating that it happens because you said it literally could not work.
No. You might have forgotten, but you were quite explicitly arguing
against government involvement in the process. And then, a few posts later, it changes to... government involvement is fine now, just nebulously-defined "unelected bureaucrats" are bad. Which is utterly off-target, since the entire dispute started with you arguing against positions being held by
elected representatives, not
unelected officials.
That is in fact literally how it is outside of countries with trade embargos and some influence games (like the divide between countries that use Sinovac and countries that use western vaccines). Yes, unless a company in particular is actively choosing not to engage with a country or countries, their product is available to anyone who's willing to buy, which will be global. I can't believe I have to explain this.
*Facepalm*
The ventilators at a GM or Ford warehouse are available for purchase overseas. The ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile are
categorically not.
They wouldn't even have to be directly competing with the US, if the UK is buying up ventilators that could have been sold elsewhere if they hadn't (which they did), then there are people who are competing with the UK over them. If they lose to the UK, they have to get their ventilators from somewhere else, which could conflict with the US. That's how shortages work. I can't believe I have to explain this.
The UK is buying up ventilators that could have been sold elsewhere.
Those ventilators are not the ones in the Strategic National Stockpile, which cannot be sold overseas.
I can't believe I have to explain this.
Yes, I'm not willing to say the government does more than send money. If something isn't nationalized, they're just sending money to a private interest in the hopes that their contract is fulfilled.
Yes, I'm sure that's what the government contracts say. "We'll send you XXX GBP, please help, you do whatever you want". No regulation, no franchise stipulations, etc.
This is a ludicrously simplistic understanding.
