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Capitalism at work. Commercial businesses need profit to survive and so, in general, deliver better innovative products. There is no way for CIA and NSA to comp

by daddyo 9y ago

Capitalism at work. Commercial businesses need profit to survive and so, in general, deliver better innovative products. There is no way for CIA and NSA to compete with Google on search and web crawling, so why bother competing with them with their own subpar products? I don't think the contractors leaked themselves. I think foreign intelligence agencies target most of them, and having multiple attack points yields more leaks than having just a single well-guarded agency. Trade-off between clamming up and remaining State-of-the-art.

linkregister 9y ago
Judging by your comment, you don't know very much about contracting in the IC. I'd rather you be less authoritative and leave it at "I think X" instead of "It's definitely X".
- daddyo 9y ago
  Please be more courteous with your dismissal. What shows that I don't know anything about contracting in the IC, and what really happens instead? I also thought my answer was very careful in its assertions. What have I stated as a definite fact and why was this wrong?
  - linkregister 9y ago
    Sorry, I was too harsh. I felt it was outrageous to inject a pro-Capitalist treatise with regards to government contracting, which for me fits in two buckets: 1. Government needs some hardware (e.g. radar, missile, aircraft, watercraft). Some preapproved vendors who have already developed relationships and comply with extensive contracting requirements bid on a project. One or more win. Some vendors that win are wildly underqualified and, especially in the realm of IT, make an inferior product at 10x the price. One of the government stakeholders works for that contractor after a few years. 2. Government for political reasons can't hire or pay enough employees, so they pay a consultancy to provide employees for them. Neither seems like an efficient capitalist action. The first due to its significant barriers to entry that forms oligopoly, and the second because it's just hiding government employment within a contract. I don't know of a good way to improve #1, but for it to be considered a testament to the efficiency of capitalism is absurd to me.

by daddyo 9y ago

linkregister 9y ago

Judging by your comment, you don't know very much about contracting in the IC. I'd rather you be less authoritative and leave it at "I think X" instead of "It's definitely X".

daddyo 9y ago
Please be more courteous with your dismissal. What shows that I don't know anything about contracting in the IC, and what really happens instead? I also thought my answer was very careful in its assertions. What have I stated as a definite fact and why was this wrong?
- linkregister 9y ago
  Sorry, I was too harsh. I felt it was outrageous to inject a pro-Capitalist treatise with regards to government contracting, which for me fits in two buckets: 1. Government needs some hardware (e.g. radar, missile, aircraft, watercraft). Some preapproved vendors who have already developed relationships and comply with extensive contracting requirements bid on a project. One or more win. Some vendors that win are wildly underqualified and, especially in the realm of IT, make an inferior product at 10x the price. One of the government stakeholders works for that contractor after a few years. 2. Government for political reasons can't hire or pay enough employees, so they pay a consultancy to provide employees for them. Neither seems like an efficient capitalist action. The first due to its significant barriers to entry that forms oligopoly, and the second because it's just hiding government employment within a contract. I don't know of a good way to improve #1, but for it to be considered a testament to the efficiency of capitalism is absurd to me.