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talkpoliticsI think many of us have dealt with government bureaucracy at one point or another. The incidents that tend to stick out are the ones where bureaucrats come up with something so out of touch with reality, that people can't understand HOW it could possibly happen. TSA comes to mind. Security isn't special in this regard, this is just a bureaucracy run amok. But it's not the only example, we can also look at what happens when a person in my home province of New Brunswick, Canada, tries to build a house.
The problem with the bureaucracy is that it's mostly focused on process. Too often the outcome doesn't matter, so long as the "process" and "procedure" was followed correctly. If you wind up with a completely insane outcome at the end? Well hey, we followed the process!
That attitude comes about because bureaucracies are by their nature risk-adverse. That is made worse by politicians piling on endless regulations, usually talking about things like "fairness" and "transparency". But that's not what you get at the end. The real result is simply to ensure nobody does things independently.
Purchasing rules are a great example. One time (several years ago) someone came to us in IT and asked if they could get their computer upgraded to run dual monitors, so they could run a projector and their screen at once. No problem, I tell them. I'll walk down the street, get the $60 part, and have it done in an hour.
That is until my supervisor stops me, and tells me that we can't do that. The store down the street isn't an approved vendor, and buying there could be a conflict of interest, or corruption, because I know the guy at the counter. Of course I know him, this city only has a couple of decent computer hardware shops! But alright. We'll try to find an approved vendor with the part.
Oh wait, my supervisor stops me again. The part isn't in the buyers guide. So what part is? Somehow we wound up buying a $300 VGA splitter cable (the approved part) from an approved vendor in an approved fashion, instead of a $60 video card upgrade that would have done the job just as effectively. But hey, at least we avoided the foul stench of corruption that would certainly have come from saving the taxpayers $240! (The same thing happens on big projects, incidentally. If you've ever wondered why so many big projects go over-budget, it's because the estimates are deliberately lowballed. Everybody knows that, but the tender rules don't let the bureaucracy say "this bid is total nonsense." So it keeps happening.)
Over time, this gets internalized and dealt with by people becoming hyper-focused only on their job and on the policies around it, not on the overall goal. Security experts come up with security rules that might theoretically boost security, but will destroy the ability for anybody to get work done using the system in question. (To avoid embarrassing my present employer, I will not give an example publically... though I have some great ones.) Somebody else now has to go argue with the management level above the security people to convince them that this can't actually happen. Which creates five rounds of meetings as it works through the various layers of management, back to the security people, then back around again.
What this hyper-focus gets you is poor decisions. Government building inspectors spending years picking on an elderly couple for not following rules about stamped lumber, without thinking about minor details like "is the house actually dangerous?" They've completely lost sight of the big picture, and are just stuck wading through details. When TSA comes up with the idea of spending billions on scanners and then molesting people to try and force them into the scanners, do you think anybody in the room stood up and said "you know, this kind of stuff is going to cost billions and damage the entire airline industry, with negligible security benefits. Let's think of something else"? Maybe, but they apparently couldn't win enough people over.
So what's the solution? There's two things that need to happen:
1. Politicians need to step in. Even if they do nothing but bicker amongst each other most of the time, elected officials have a useful function in that they hold the leash on the bureaucracy. They could stop this nonsense VERY quickly. Sometimes they do, and when they do it snaps the bureaucracy back a few steps.
2. We (you) as a public need to be more willing to entertain the risk of bad decisions. Most of the rules that prevent people in the bureaucracy from using their brains stemmed from good intentions, for fear of things like corruption. But when you legislate out any possibility of corruption, you've removed any human judgment from the process. But judgment is exactly what we need more of. Had someone inspecting the house been empowered to say "yes it broke these rules, but it's perfectly safe so we're going to cite you with a warning and let you go on about your business," untold tens of thousands of dollars in employee time and court costs would have been saved. Not to mention the public good of not harassing an elderly couple for no good reason.
The vast majority of the time, people make the right decision. We need to empower them to do it again.
Thoughts? Flames?
(This might sound kind of ranty, and I guess it is. Most of the time I really like my job in the government. It's good people, good work, and sometimes we get to do some public good. But we could do a lot more then we do, and it infuriates me when an obvious public benefit can't be realized because some manager with no knowledge of the subject blocked it due to some policy written in 1916.)
The problem with the bureaucracy is that it's mostly focused on process. Too often the outcome doesn't matter, so long as the "process" and "procedure" was followed correctly. If you wind up with a completely insane outcome at the end? Well hey, we followed the process!
That attitude comes about because bureaucracies are by their nature risk-adverse. That is made worse by politicians piling on endless regulations, usually talking about things like "fairness" and "transparency". But that's not what you get at the end. The real result is simply to ensure nobody does things independently.
Purchasing rules are a great example. One time (several years ago) someone came to us in IT and asked if they could get their computer upgraded to run dual monitors, so they could run a projector and their screen at once. No problem, I tell them. I'll walk down the street, get the $60 part, and have it done in an hour.
That is until my supervisor stops me, and tells me that we can't do that. The store down the street isn't an approved vendor, and buying there could be a conflict of interest, or corruption, because I know the guy at the counter. Of course I know him, this city only has a couple of decent computer hardware shops! But alright. We'll try to find an approved vendor with the part.
Oh wait, my supervisor stops me again. The part isn't in the buyers guide. So what part is? Somehow we wound up buying a $300 VGA splitter cable (the approved part) from an approved vendor in an approved fashion, instead of a $60 video card upgrade that would have done the job just as effectively. But hey, at least we avoided the foul stench of corruption that would certainly have come from saving the taxpayers $240! (The same thing happens on big projects, incidentally. If you've ever wondered why so many big projects go over-budget, it's because the estimates are deliberately lowballed. Everybody knows that, but the tender rules don't let the bureaucracy say "this bid is total nonsense." So it keeps happening.)
Over time, this gets internalized and dealt with by people becoming hyper-focused only on their job and on the policies around it, not on the overall goal. Security experts come up with security rules that might theoretically boost security, but will destroy the ability for anybody to get work done using the system in question. (To avoid embarrassing my present employer, I will not give an example publically... though I have some great ones.) Somebody else now has to go argue with the management level above the security people to convince them that this can't actually happen. Which creates five rounds of meetings as it works through the various layers of management, back to the security people, then back around again.
What this hyper-focus gets you is poor decisions. Government building inspectors spending years picking on an elderly couple for not following rules about stamped lumber, without thinking about minor details like "is the house actually dangerous?" They've completely lost sight of the big picture, and are just stuck wading through details. When TSA comes up with the idea of spending billions on scanners and then molesting people to try and force them into the scanners, do you think anybody in the room stood up and said "you know, this kind of stuff is going to cost billions and damage the entire airline industry, with negligible security benefits. Let's think of something else"? Maybe, but they apparently couldn't win enough people over.
So what's the solution? There's two things that need to happen:
1. Politicians need to step in. Even if they do nothing but bicker amongst each other most of the time, elected officials have a useful function in that they hold the leash on the bureaucracy. They could stop this nonsense VERY quickly. Sometimes they do, and when they do it snaps the bureaucracy back a few steps.
2. We (you) as a public need to be more willing to entertain the risk of bad decisions. Most of the rules that prevent people in the bureaucracy from using their brains stemmed from good intentions, for fear of things like corruption. But when you legislate out any possibility of corruption, you've removed any human judgment from the process. But judgment is exactly what we need more of. Had someone inspecting the house been empowered to say "yes it broke these rules, but it's perfectly safe so we're going to cite you with a warning and let you go on about your business," untold tens of thousands of dollars in employee time and court costs would have been saved. Not to mention the public good of not harassing an elderly couple for no good reason.
The vast majority of the time, people make the right decision. We need to empower them to do it again.
Thoughts? Flames?
(This might sound kind of ranty, and I guess it is. Most of the time I really like my job in the government. It's good people, good work, and sometimes we get to do some public good. But we could do a lot more then we do, and it infuriates me when an obvious public benefit can't be realized because some manager with no knowledge of the subject blocked it due to some policy written in 1916.)
First a joke then a real post...
Date: 16/11/10 22:05 (UTC)Take a cage filled with five monkeys. In the center of the cage place a banana on a string. When one of the monkey's trys to get the banana hose down all of the other monkeys. Repeat this step a few times until the monkeys all realize that when one goes for the banana all the others will get soaked. They will eventually try and stop the one monkey from reaching for the banana.
Step 2
Now put away the water hose and replace one of the original monkeys that got soaked with a new monkey. This new monkey will try to go for the banana in the center of the cage, but will be thwarted by his peers. He will soon learn that if he goes for the banana, he will receive a beating from the other monkeys in the cage.
Step 3
Replace another of the original monkeys that got the hose with a new one. Like before this new monkey will see the banana in the center of the cage and try to go for it?only to be pummeled by the other original monkeys and the monkey from STEP 2. (The monkey from step 2 has not been soaked with water, but takes part in the beating with enthusiasm)
Step 4
Keep on replacing the original monkeys out with new monkeys as done in step 2 and 3 until there are no more of the original monkeys left in the cage. Each time you replace a monkey, the monkey from the previous step will partake in the beating of the new monkey.
What you are left with is a cage full of five monkeys who have not been soaked with water and the banana still hanging. No one monkey attempts to reach for the banana because they all know at this point that if they do, they will receive a beating from all the other monkeys.
Why Do They continue to partake in stopping any monkey that goes for the banana even though none of these monkeys have been hosed down for going for the banana?
Because as far as they know that?s the way things have always been done around here so why should they do things any different,,,
And that is where COMPANY POLICY begins
Re: First a joke then a real post...
Date: 16/11/10 22:29 (UTC)It's true though. I once heard about a report commissioned by a governing party that was done and printed. It's 2000 pages long. Who reads that in paper form in this day and age? It cost a significant amount of money to print.
When asked who decided to print it or why it was printed... nobody really knew. The question itself surprised some people.
I believe to this day that the answer was just inertia. It got sent to the printers because reports get a thousand copies printed. Why? Who knows. But it's been done that way for as long as people have been there, so it keeps happening.
(Somebody asking the question was the first step to getting it changed, because nobody had given it a second thought before.)
Re: First a joke then a real post...
Date: 17/11/10 16:33 (UTC)This is a fairly poor province, spending that kind of money on stuff that doesn't get read simply isn't a good idea.
Re: First a joke then a real post...
Date: 17/11/10 16:50 (UTC)Hell for what it costs to print a 20,000 page document you could have converted the entire thing to an indexed and search able PDF and then placed as many copies as you needed on one of these...
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=SD+card+sale&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=17626130196514867655&ei=MgbkTLaFFsXPnAe38LjEDg&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ8wIwAA#
for less money
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:25 (UTC)But if nobody can make a wrong decision, nobody can make a right one either. The rules stopped one guy from ripping the taxpayer off, and stopped another guy (me) from using my knowledge to save the taxpayer money.
Did the taxpayers come out ahead? I don't know. But I think more people in the government will do the right thing then the wrong thing if given the chance.
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:36 (UTC)You mean that there aren't decisions to be made. In ideal circumstances, the decision that is made for you already is the right one. Obviously we don't live in ideal situations, but we can work to make the made decision close to the right ones, right? No reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater?
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:55 (UTC)It's just a reality that no policy can cover every situation. When we're going to wind up with a bizzare and clearly unintended outcome like spending $240 more then necessary on a part, a smarter policy would empower people to say "we're going to break the policy because it's in the public good."
That's the part that requires people to be allowed to make a decision.
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:17 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:31 (UTC)In fact half the bureaucracy doesn't understand them either. They get complicated, then overlap other complicated policies... and you need a policy branch full of specialized people who do nothing but understand policy and try to make sure everybody else is following it.
Not only is it bad for the public's ability to understand or challenge bureaucratic decisions, it's just bad for productivity.
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 23:08 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/11/10 05:42 (UTC)Recomending this post for 'recomended'
Date: 16/11/10 22:18 (UTC)First off this is a great post. You speak from experience and break down the situation beautiful.
I don't believe we can empower bureaucrats to think for themselves and to for 'The People' to accept the higher level of risk that would involve. The reason; government is not by its nature an empowering beast but one that is designed to disempowered the individual. Remember we surrender our power as people who consent to be governed. Therefore we can't then tell those bureaucrats "you need to think more independently!" when they also have given up their power and freedom to be governed. They are automatons because they must be.
(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:23 (UTC)Re: Recomending this post for 'recomended'
Date: 16/11/10 22:49 (UTC)Software security is full of this type of stuff too, but it comes as recommendations and best practices. Security experts take the data and find common problems, and common solutions. Things you should do. Things you should avoid. At the end of the day though, the power lies with the system designers and developers. I know the data. I know the business area. Most importantly, I know the users. A secure system that the users can't use is worthless.
In the bureaucracy, the tendancy is to have these things come down as policies instead of recommendations. People who don't know the data, the business area, or the users come down from high atop the mountain and decree a bunch of things. The result is junk software, because none of them are normal users, and none of them are developers. You get lots of security, but no functionality (because their area is security, not functionality).
In that case, we need the same thing we get outside the bureaucracy. The people doing the work need the power to decide what works and what doesn't. Taking that away and doing it by committee or doing it by policy just results in junk.
You can probably tell that I'm an IT guy. :) But it applies to a lot of areas. David Chen was found not guilty of various charges for performing a citizens arrest on a shoplifter (http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/10/29/peter-kuitenbrouwer-judge-finds-david-chen-not-guilty-or-the-grocer-wore-grey/). Technically, according to how the law is written he did break it. The judge is empowered to make decisions, and made the correct one IMO.
Had the crown prosecutors office exercised their own judgment, the case never would have come to trial. We would have saved a lot of money on court costs, saved a good man from having to endure that, and not brought the entire system into disrepute (which is exactly what that case did, public reaction was overwhelming and enraged).
The risk is that a bureaucrat will get it wrong, and the public will be mad. But following the rules to the letter also results in wrong decisions. You're quite possibly right that the public won't accept some risk of mistakes in order to get more judgment into the system. I hope you're wrong.
Re: Recomending this post for 'recomended'
Date: 16/11/10 23:53 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:23 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:37 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 18/11/10 05:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 16/11/10 22:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 00:09 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 00:12 (UTC)And safety is always extremely inefficient, even redundant and plain no fun. Parents who have child proof locks on cupboards with childproof bottles are incredibly caring people. But it's a wonder how any of us ever survived with lead painted cribs and see-saws in the playground and softball games with no helmets!
And motorcycle helmet laws. How strange that with little to no training a 16yr old kid can get a license and zip off on a crotch rocket as long as he has a helmet. Heck those same kids can drive a sports car as long as they have a seatbelt. They say these laws save lives. Unfortunately drivers are still getting killed. A sane bureaucracy would insist on better training. Or outlaw speed demon transportation altogether, but naw, they would rather ban SUV's.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 00:20 (UTC)Oh, and UFC. Because banning that keeps people safe, while boxing is perfectly legitimate.
Or smoking in your own transport truck, because it happens to be your "place of work".
Gee, I'm picking on Ontario today. :P
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 00:26 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 00:43 (UTC)That said, I don't think most people are actually looking at it that way. People don't generally write policy to say "I can hide behind this." In Canadian politics (where I live), rule #1 of being a public servant is "don't embarrass the minister." A lot of policy gets created to try and avoid that outcome, even if it sometimes causes the very thing it's trying to avoid.
Some of it also makes it easier to replace people. If a position requires a lot of judgment and experience, it's hard to fill and replace people. If someone can just follow a policy? Anybody literate can be trained to do it.
(Wikipedia has a good explanation of Ministerial Responsibility for those not from a Parliamentary style of government. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_ministerial_responsibility))
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 03:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 17:19 (UTC)In the corporate world that happens ALL the time.
Rules and policies are enacted constantly with the goal of preventing anyone who is involved in drafting those rules from ever directly facing blame for their actions or responsibility for the results of those actions.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 01:43 (UTC)What he missed was reified policy is rarely ever cleared out when new ones are put in -- most large organizations eventually become plagued by redundant and overlapping policies and positions, all of which have interested stakeholders who are vested in not seeing it change.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 00:33 (UTC)This is completely true.
This is called libertarianism. Welcome to the revolution.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 01:02 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 03:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 09:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 04:01 (UTC)"We will rarely, if ever, conduct an evolution exactly the way it was originally developed."
The inability to adapt to unforeseen consequences is one of bureaucracy's worst flaws. The problem is that they often cannot adapt or flex as it is their task to enforce regulations made by the legislature as closely to the letter as possible. The cause of their failure, therefore, appears to be a disconnect between the legislators and the bureaucrats tasked with enforcing the laws they pass. Do you believe involving the relevant agencies in the decision-making process would help matters or do you believe that it would only worsen them?
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 16:27 (UTC)Policy needs to be written involving the people who actually understand the work that will be impacted by it, otherwise you get a fair amount of nonsense. There's nothing worse then politicians and the most senior bureaucrats (who work with the politicians) getting together, coming up with something, and passing a new law only to spring it on the rest of us and then be told that they just banned water quality testing by accident. (That one is a made up example, but this type of thing does happen.)
So in that sense, yes you need people involved. But you need the right people. If you try to bring every relevant agency in and craft a policy that covers every situation, what you get is deadlock as every agency talks amongst themselves after every proposal. It takes years to get anything done that way. Then when you Do finish it, you get a policy so complicated that nobody can understand it, and following it costs a fortune.
It's a hard thing to get right, which is why I much prefer objectives and guidelines rather then policy and procedures. Tell me what goal you're trying to accomplish, and then let the experts figure out how to do it. That's what you pay us for.
(IT is really bad for that type of thing. Software companies like to pitch product to senior managers because they can use buzzwords and glossy brochures to propose all sorts of benefits. Experienced IT staff are much better at seeing through the bullshit. So whenever management comes in and says "hey we're getting X software!", everybody in IT groans. It's usually the worst choice for the job and was picked for all the wrong reasons.
Had they instead said "we need something to do this, find us the tools", we could have gotten better stuff for cheaper.)
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 21:20 (UTC)I was first recommended that book in the software testing class I am currently taking. Testing is probably the most critical part of software development because a product is harmful to both buyer and seller if it has major undiscovered flaws. One thing I've learned from the class is that while you should create a test plan early in the development process, you shouldn't view that plan as a guide, not a straitjacket. That approach is explained rather succinctly in that book.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 16:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 16:18 (UTC)Not true. First of all, it doesn't work for computers. Every time you see a computer crash? That's not random behavior, that's the computer doing what it was told and the process being wrong. I work in IT, I see this type of stuff all the time. The single biggest problem with computers is that they do what we tell them instead of what we want them to do. (Computers don't speak "human.")
The other problem is that process is built for normal situations. It doesn't handle abnormal situations. If you follow the process anyway, you get nonsense for a result. The advantage to a human over a computer is that they can use their brain and sanity-check what the process gives them.
When nobody does that, we get absurd situations like a shoplifter with 48 convictions being recruited by a prosecutor to go after a merchant who performed a citizens arrest. The "process" was followed just fine, and the result was so outrageous that it embarrassed the entire government.
Then why not put in a request to update the process to further accommodate your requirements, using the approved Process Amendment Procedure? It's what I do.
Because I was a coop student on a work term, and didn't have the six years it'd take to push that through every level of management to get it changed (especially since purchasing is driven by legislation, which means it needs to go even higher).
Now I could do that, but it doesn't help you when you need the situation resolved today and can't get a meeting assembled of the necessary managers until 2011.
Bad idea. Politicians don't want to solve things. They want to get re-elected. They'll suck the cock of whoever will give them votes. This means they have no interest in solving a problem; they'll exacerbate it as much as they can because it will give them votes. Thank God most judges and bureaucracies are immune from the tyranny of the mob.
TSA could use a little tyranny of the mob right now. Politicians are there to hold the leash, and occasionally to yank it back. That's one of their most important functions.
As for people... yeah I do find they generally make the right decision if given the chance. Who knows more about the situation? The inspector who just went out to look at it, the manager two layers removed from the inspector who has never been in the field, or the policy wonk in another branch who knows nothing about the work at all but gets to write procedures governing it?
It's pretty clear to me where I want the decision making power to rest, and it's not with the policy wonk.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 21:36 (UTC)Speaking as someone who has been studying computer science for almost four years now I can say that is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard in my life. Humans have intuition. They have the ability to judge others' emotions based on voice inflection and body language. They can utilize their mental faculties in general applications rather than specific tasks. These are all things that computers cannot yet do and will not be able to do at any point in the immediate future.
Just because agencies should have elected positions does not mean they should not have public control. Having entities like the military and police without such control has never been a good idea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_militarism#Rise_of_militarism) Why would you think we should treat other government agencies any different?
You cannot say that bureaucrats should have more leeway in their duties right after saying that they should be restricted by rigid rules and regulations. You can't have it both ways.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 12:07 (UTC)I worked as a government contractor for the military and was able to see why we have the $500 hammer. It is a collection of conflicting regulations demanded hysterically by the people that communicate with the government. Ya' know. The pissed off people.
We are victims of ourselves.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 15:16 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 15:39 (UTC)How to bend the rules of corporate bureaucracy (http://www.usatoday.com/money/jobcenter/workplace/rules/2002-11-08-corporate-bureaucracy_x.htm)
Corporate bureaucracy thrives (http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2000/02/28/editorial2.html)
Big corporations differ little from government when it comes to bloated staffs and budgets. The one difference is that they can say goodbye to large numbers of employees. In government, that's a challenge almost impossible to achieve. Public employee unions have far more clout than the private-sector unions.
For good reason. Public-sector unions elect the decision-makers (legislators), but private-sector unions do not elect boards of directors or corporate officers. (They may be working on that, but as of now their power is limited to strikes.)
How do those corporate bureaucracies get started?
Once a business gets beyond 100 employees, top management begins to lose touch with what's going on in the trenches. At that point, the supervisors commence to build their own prestige by gradually increasing the number of people they supervise. They create a "need" for more help when, in fact, they need to quit acting like lords and masters and perform more of the nitty gritty themselves.
Read more: Corporate bureaucracy thrives | Pacific Business News
Wait a second. Does that mean that having bottom-up management might actually reduce the need for expanded bureaucracy? Nah lets just let the market decide. They know best.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 17:17 (UTC)"Once a business gets beyond 100 employees, top management begins to lose touch with what's going on in the trenches. At that point, the supervisors commence to build their own prestige by gradually increasing the number of people they supervise. They create a "need" for more help when, in fact, they need to quit acting like lords and masters and perform more of the nitty gritty themselves."
Bottom up driven companies would also be fairly common but by no means the majority, nor should they be as they are in general far less efficient suffering many of the same problems of a bloated bureaucracy because they lack individual decision makers relying instead on .
The reason why the large corporation is king is 100% the product of government. First because of Limited Liability protections and absentee ownership created by securities rules (imposed by government) and second because even a mid sized company with 1000 employees cannot afford to hire an entire legal team to ensure that they remain in compliance with all of the government regulations that govern them, this creates pressure for corporations to grow beyond a size that can be adequately managed by it's founders and so bureaucracy grows with it
(no subject)
Date: 18/11/10 14:51 (UTC)Right, private market forces played absolutely no role in their own ascension.
Don't you get embarrassed by making such black-white arguments?
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 21:16 (UTC)My dad (a machinist) attempted when he was just starting out to bid on a government job to build some sort of metal container (let's say a trash can -- nothing to do with the military or technical function) for a battleship. He examined an existing item which he was told to copy, then put in a bid. Only then did he find out that the paint he'd planned to use (which would have been fine -- purposed for seagoing, etc) wasn't good enough. The specs were written in such a way that the ONLY paint on the market that met the criteria was $95/gallon (this was in the 1960s, so that would be, what, $1000 today?) The job nearly bankrupted him, and from then on he refused to do any jobs for the government.
I always wondered why that paint was specified like that. What was the point? Then a friend who works for NASA told me how he was building a component for the robot arm of the space station, and he needed a particular transistor. He knew from experience which one he wanted to use, but he wasn't allowed to specify it directly. Instead he had to describe in in the request for bids in such a way that it would be the only transistor to fit the requirements. This involved a very lengthy and convoluted passage including dimensions, color, and a bunch of other crap that had absolutely nothing to do with the function of the transistor itself. We both shook our heads at the thought that someday, years from now, another project will probably blindly incorporate all that verbiage as a requirement, and nobody will know why.
Of course, in the case of the battleship paint, I presume somebody was getting a hefty kickback.
(no subject)
Date: 17/11/10 23:05 (UTC)