[kylehotchkiss]

I realize the answer to this is probably very obvious to others but hope they can explain it here: why is the US not nationalizing warship production? And more ports? The infra for air cargo (airports, atc) is largely government owned, why can't water cargo infra be?

[sillywalk]

> why is the US not nationalizing

That is essentially blasphemy in terms of US politics.

And the corruption. The amount of dollars the war-industry has spent to buy members of congress. The revolving door between military / civilian brass & the war industry. How projects subcontracted over as many congressional districts as possible.

[ianburrell]

A lot of ports are government owned. Port of Oakland is department of Oakland. But that doesn't have anything to do with warship production.

The first problem is that the US is doing lots of new classes of ship and those always take more time and budget. The US has built the Burke destroyers for decades without much trouble.

The second problem is that the US has low number of shipyards. Opening up new ones or expanding existing ones would be better than nationalizing. But that would take a long time. This makes new classes worse because have to schedule space and that can screw the long-running classes.

The US should also get rid of the Jones Act. It was supposed to protect the commercial shipping but that has dwindled to only inter-US shipping. The shipyards should be made to compete, and maybe that will improve their efficiency. Or the shipyards should be converted into military.

Another suggestion I heard was to have Japan and South Korea build hulls and the US can finish them.