4 ms·

The term "gotcha capitalism" pretty much sums it up for me.

barmstrong 16y ago
I'm not familiar with that term, but from reading the article the guy doesn't seem to point the finger at capitalism. He is saying big government is more susceptible to this than free market capitalism.
- chrischen2 16y ago
  I thought he went out of his way to emphasize that it's not necessarily big government that's the problem, since full transparency in government would serve to reduce the problem as "not buying the product" does the same in the private sector.
  - Maro 16y ago
    Hundreds of pages of legalese are the de-facto weapon against transparency --- even if you can obtain the documents, it's so boring, timeconsuming and frustrating to read it that it becomes effectively opaque.
    - chrischen2 16y ago
      It only takes one person to do that to expose it to everyone.
    - dejb 16y ago
      People contribute to open source projects - doing work for free that many would consider mundane. Looking for loopholes would be a lot like debugging.
notauser 16y ago
It's not quite that straightforward. Think about it from the other side of the fence. My experience was with weapon systems but to a certain extent it does apply to roads. Because of THE RULES only fixed priced bids are acceptable. As a contractor you are being asked to quote on the complete price for a new product build, even though you haven't designed, tested or built anything like it before. The price you quote needs to include the cost of upgrading a bunch of existing equipment to support your new product. You have no idea what the current state of the existing equipment is. You have three choices: - Quote a huge price that fairly covers every possible risk, and get told it's too expensive. - Quote a small price and caveat the hell out of everything and get blamed when the initial conditions or complexity turns out to have been misunderstood or misrepresented. - Go bankrupt. You actually even see the same decision being made by normal employees at work. "Sure boss, I can do it in three weeks, as long as Dell delivers on time" would be an example of option (2) in action.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  So, when forced to choose between three honest options with (potentially!) unfavorable outcomes and a dishonest one it's ok to be dishonest?
  - crc32 16y ago
    The contractor has an incentive to identify caveats, the purchaser has an incentive to pin down those caveats before agreeing to the purchase. Where is the dishonesty in that? It is the purpose of the contract.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      The dishonesty is in undercutting another party that is willing to work without trickery by using a bunch of paper manipulation to effectively obtain a much higher price than the original bid. That both parties collude in this makes it no less wrong.
      - crc32 16y ago
        By "a bunch of paper manipulation" you must mean a legally binding contract? If something is specified in the contract, I find it difficult to see how this can be called "trickery", it is a magician telling you in advance that he may hide the coin up his sleeve.
        cia_plant 16y ago
        By 'a bunch of paper manipulation' he probably means some of the practices mentioned elsewhere in this discussion - such as hiring someone whose full-time job is to find loopholes and contradictions within complex contracts, so they can charge more money; or grossly misrepresenting the likely cost of a project, with full intention of raising the price regardless of ultimate conditions. The misrepresentation in the latter case is making it out that a clause applies to exceptional circumstances, when its actual purpose is to pad the contract under any circumstances. You seem to think that each party should simply expect the other party to try to get as much from them as possible, through whatever misrepresentations and legal strategems they can get away with. Maybe this is normal in the areas where you work - I guess Jacques and I both come from backgrounds where this would be abnormal, and in fact disgusting behavior.

I'm not familiar with that term, but from reading the article the guy doesn't seem to point the finger at capitalism. He is saying big government is more susceptible to this than free market capitalism.

chrischen2 16y ago
I thought he went out of his way to emphasize that it's not necessarily big government that's the problem, since full transparency in government would serve to reduce the problem as "not buying the product" does the same in the private sector.
- Maro 16y ago
  Hundreds of pages of legalese are the de-facto weapon against transparency --- even if you can obtain the documents, it's so boring, timeconsuming and frustrating to read it that it becomes effectively opaque.
  - chrischen2 16y ago
    It only takes one person to do that to expose it to everyone.
  - dejb 16y ago
    People contribute to open source projects - doing work for free that many would consider mundane. Looking for loopholes would be a lot like debugging.

notauser 16y ago

It's not quite that straightforward. Think about it from the other side of the fence. My experience was with weapon systems but to a certain extent it does apply to roads. Because of THE RULES only fixed priced bids are acceptable. As a contractor you are being asked to quote on the complete price for a new product build, even though you haven't designed, tested or built anything like it before. The price you quote needs to include the cost of upgrading a bunch of existing equipment to support your new product. You have no idea what the current state of the existing equipment is. You have three choices: - Quote a huge price that fairly covers every possible risk, and get told it's too expensive. - Quote a small price and caveat the hell out of everything and get blamed when the initial conditions or complexity turns out to have been misunderstood or misrepresented. - Go bankrupt. You actually even see the same decision being made by normal employees at work. "Sure boss, I can do it in three weeks, as long as Dell delivers on time" would be an example of option (2) in action.

jacquesm 16y ago
So, when forced to choose between three honest options with (potentially!) unfavorable outcomes and a dishonest one it's ok to be dishonest?
- crc32 16y ago
  The contractor has an incentive to identify caveats, the purchaser has an incentive to pin down those caveats before agreeing to the purchase. Where is the dishonesty in that? It is the purpose of the contract.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    The dishonesty is in undercutting another party that is willing to work without trickery by using a bunch of paper manipulation to effectively obtain a much higher price than the original bid. That both parties collude in this makes it no less wrong.
    - crc32 16y ago
      By "a bunch of paper manipulation" you must mean a legally binding contract? If something is specified in the contract, I find it difficult to see how this can be called "trickery", it is a magician telling you in advance that he may hide the coin up his sleeve.
      - cia_plant 16y ago
        By 'a bunch of paper manipulation' he probably means some of the practices mentioned elsewhere in this discussion - such as hiring someone whose full-time job is to find loopholes and contradictions within complex contracts, so they can charge more money; or grossly misrepresenting the likely cost of a project, with full intention of raising the price regardless of ultimate conditions. The misrepresentation in the latter case is making it out that a clause applies to exceptional circumstances, when its actual purpose is to pad the contract under any circumstances. You seem to think that each party should simply expect the other party to try to get as much from them as possible, through whatever misrepresentations and legal strategems they can get away with. Maybe this is normal in the areas where you work - I guess Jacques and I both come from backgrounds where this would be abnormal, and in fact disgusting behavior.