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The jobs should be auctioned. A job is posted, the top 20 candidates are identified, and each submits a bid for how much to do the job and the lowest bid is ac
by marze 16y ago
The jobs should be auctioned. A job is posted, the top 20 candidates are identified, and each submits a bid for how much to do the job and the lowest bid is accepted.
This is the way many other jobs are assigned such as construction contractors or engineering consultants. CA taxpayers could save a bundle with this approach.
- maxawaytoolong 16y agoThe top 20 candidates somehow always end up being the relatives of the people running the auction. The low bidder wins, but every time someone is arrested for a crime not on the list in the contract (which is 90% of them), the state is charged an "change order" fee.
- marze 16y agoThe argument "there are other problems in the world so there is no point in fixing problem X" is weak to say the least. If there are other problems you find after cutting the cost of government worker salaries by 70%, fix them next.
- maxawaytoolong 16y agoThat wasn't my argument at all. My argument was pointing out the common problems with a bid based approach. In almost every locale, bid-based contracts are a bigger source of government spending waste than inflated government employee salaries!
- marze 16y agoFor something as generic as a law enforcement job or civil servant job, I don't see the potential for the problems you mention. Instead of two or three contractors and a murky selection process subject to under-the-table payments, you have a large selection of very similar candidates, and the selection process is as simple as "how much will you be willing to do job X for" with the low bid winning. Somewhere, some economist professor has to have named and analyzed this type approach.