Comment by IceHegel

Agreed, and this is a somewhat recent phenomenon (see wtf happened in 1971)

For example, we have 100+ drone startups in the United States. But our overall drone production capacity (hammers in Civ) hasn't actually increased. We just have 100 companies buying grey market from Vietnam and Indonesia, many of which came from China originally.

The way the system should work is if you want to do a drone startup, you need to build a drone factory. That's what the money is for.

If the startup fails, maybe the market leader buys the factory for cheap. This is how the automobile industry was in the United States - a bunch of those companies went bust, but the factories were often kept online by the winners.