Paying for High Ground

You can observe a lot by just watching – Yogi Berra

My wife, mother-in-law, and I took a cruise on the Danube and Rhine rivers a few years ago and saw several castles along the way. Scaling one with a tour guide, we noticed there were remote towers of the same construction in different directions atop nearby hills. I asked if they were part of the same realm. Sure, the guide said, that’s how they got early warnings back then.

What will someone pay to increase their field of view? Hypernomics provides us insight.

Global Hawk (A) is the most expensive Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in the United States inventory. With a flyaway cost of $147M, we’ve managed to buy 42 of them. We’ve also bought 40 of the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) IIR (B) at $156M apiece. What a coincidence!

Or is it?

We plot quantities and prices for UAVs and civilian satellites in C. While UAVs surveil or attack, satellites not belonging solely to the military survey the weather (GOES and NOAA) or offer positions (GPS) or communications (Starlink). Note UAVs and satellites abide by the same Demand Frontier. Our readiness to buy them goes to a point along that curve and stops there. I wonder where watchtowers lie.

#hypernomics #markets #innovation #sales #demand