America's Comparative Advantage: Cluster Bombs

If you've ever taken an economics course, you're familiar with comparative advantage. If you've never heard of it, it's the idea that certain parties (countries, city-states etc) are better at producing certain goods over others and as a result, it's mutually beneficial to trade.

It's more complicated than that and for the record, I did get a C in Intro to Economics. Nonetheless, I'm going to continue as if I were an authority on the subject.

Comparative advantage made a lot of sense in 1817 when countries like Portugal and England specialized in the production of wine and cloth. In the age of Wal-Mart and Starbucks, I'm not entirely sure that the idea still makes sense. Is China's comparative advantage cheap labor? Is Taiwan's comparative advantage small plastic toys? What's America's comparative advantage? Frappuccino?

Maybe some high-minded economist will write in and make me feel like an ass. In the mean time, I'll tell you what America's comparative advantage is:

Bombs.

We make 'em better than anybody. Big and small, nuclear or conventional. You need 'em? We got 'em. Just look at what Wikipedia tells me:

"The United States is by far the largest exporter of weapons in the world, selling more weapons than the next 14 countries combined. Military sales account for about 18 percent of the national budget, far and away the greatest proportion of any nation."

What brought all this up? This morning I woke up to a heart-warming story on NPR about children in Lebanon picking up unexploded Israeli cluster bombs because they look like toys. That got me thinking, "Who makes these bombs?"

After about a half-second of thought it came to me: we did!

That got me thinking about the actual people who make them. From the executives at the top who sell the clusters right down to the people on the factory floor who screw them together. How do they feel about it? I seriously just wonder how these people feel about it.

For this reason, I'm going to write letters to the ten largest weapons manufactures in the US. I'm going to ask them if they make cluster bombs, and if so, how they feel about it? Do cluster bombs excite them? Or is this just a stopgap until something better comes along? Like a job at Wal-Mart?

Even though I might get a visit from the FBI for doing this, I think it could be a real learning experience. Stay tuned for the inevitably enlightening form letters I'll receive from GE and the Carlyle Group.