Came here to post this lol

I knew someone would post this fast and I was not dissapointed.

The infamous examples of $500 hammers, for example, were anti sparking hammers for working around flammables or munitions, hence requiring special materials, certification, and low production runs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Commission

I'm not one to praise Reagan, but the Packard Commission picked off some incredibly low hanging fruit. The $435 hammer ($1235 adjusted for inflation) was a boondoggle by any standard. That it was overcharged by a factor of 2-3x instead of the sloppy journalism implying a 100x markup doesn't refute the fact that these contracts were corrupt on their face.

While a soap dispenser having an 80x markup seems absurd, it might be more reasonable than it seems at first glance.

Either the equipment could be purchased wholesale much cheaper (as was often the case even for industrial grade goods) or the production should have been insourced to the department that had a bespoke demand.

The fact that Boeing exists at all is absurd, given the degree to which government monopsony and security concerns force them to act as a department within the public sector. But the extortionary rates illustrate the fraud that is the reason these public-private relationships exist.

Your standard one-way-valve/flexible-tube dispenser, for example, would leak quite horribly at altitude (or burst), neither of which is desirable.

You take all those factors THEN double the cost. Government contracting in a nutshell.

Let's not also forget the fleet of passenger aircraft for distinguished persons, maintained by the military, with everything custom made and embroidered with presidential seals and produced in the USA and run through vigorous inspection to prevent microphone or pagers or something inside your soap dispenser.

You ever see the video of the snap on socket being sold for 50k?

This is a regular occurrence in the MIC, it only comes up when you fail to deliver on something and the Pentagon actually decides to open an investigation.

Why? It's common knowledge you can easily ask 300% of your default price if it's the government. And soap dispensers are kind of needed. Nowadays companies often buy the non-touchy expensive ones. So it isn't really too weird.

War is a racket

The COTS unit shown there is not tested and certified to the contract requirements Boeing was working to. Simple as. If the price ridiculous? Absolutely yes. But you cannot go to a home hardware store and slap one in a plane.

I'm 90% sure these deals are a way to funnel money into defense contractors without having a suspicious paper trail.

Overcharge a bit here and there, and by sheer volume you get a nice shadow budget to build and operate things that aren't even supposed to exist.

The cabin is usually pressurized to the equivalent of 8000 ft asl. So the dispenser does have to deal with pressure changes. A simple vent hole aught to take care of that though.

I mean, wouldn't you if the rake handle had huge bags of cash tied to it? They'll always step on the rake but they're practiced enough that they only get hit in the face occasionally.

I work in this space. There's a wide variety of reasons, a company being dumb and greedy is definitely among them but typically just a tiny part of the equation. The biggest thing is certified vendors. The military/government is incredibly strict with who they'll contract with. Which means the supply is incredibly limited on many things, which in turn means that companies will ratchet up prices a crazy amount in part to deal with the goofy standards that the government requires on their goods but also because they know the demand far outweighs the supply.

There is also the burden of time. The US government drags their feet an INSANE amount on projects. It scales with size as well. The larger the project the slower things move almost every time. It very frequently gets to a point where they need stuff done right now because they waited too long and will pay pretty much any price to do it.

There is also the fact that the military is operating with a budget chalk full of "fuck you money." In short, money is immaterial. Half the time they don't even look at the price, whatever it costs doesn't matter, just get it done and get it done right.

My company marks up shit an insane amount and I know for a fact pretty much every other certified vendor is as well. I dunno about 8k% (lol) markup but honestly that doesn't shock me. The prices I've seen are jaw dropping. And they pretty much never get negotiated or rejected.

It's often the military's own flowed down certification requirements that result in significantly higher costs

It's much more likely to be corporate kickbacks for political donations.