[mschuster91]

> we don't have special, government-only clothing, boot or weapons factories in the US anymore. If we did, we'd have the same planned economy shortages and overruns that any other such system does.

But now, Western governments have to endure usurious prices or massive budget/time overruns for basic supplies (e.g. Germany has a problem with shoes for soldiers), quality issues (in Germany, G36 rifle, police uniforms in Bavaria and IIRC there were also issues with protection vests).

Planned economy Soviet-style didn't fail because of being what it was, it failed because of a lack of data gathering and processing (demand modeling), as well as the procedural inflexibility to react to short term changes.

[solidsnack9000]

Those problems often exist because of single sourcing, and the arsenal system was often much worse. Protection vests, helmets and other stuff that meet military standards are actually quite affordable in the US and there are multiple vendors for all of them. A good search to run online to see what the system looks like is “AR 670 boots”.