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I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and

by m0xte 7y ago

I’ve always said that governments should use our tax money to design and validate key health and infrastructure components and only outsource manufacturing and only to local businesses. Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. However even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally. Edit: I seem to have stirred up capitalist defence here. To clarify: The government runs healthcare here in the UK. They have a responsibility for making sure there is supply of equipment available for us. This isn't some car pooling company that says "there's no cars available until next Wed", this is healthcare. And as for production, the government should have agreements in place with manufacturers to switch to infrastructure build out. We've screwed up flood defences, energy, healthcare so far. Lets stop now.

maxerickson 7y ago
I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators. It wouldn't necessarily have been trivial for another company to pick the design up and produce it, but it would have been possible.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators. The big company that bought the small one would simply have claimed that the design was their intellectual property and nobody else could build it.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    Yes, that's one thing contracts are used for, to specify what you get in exchange for payments, in a durable way.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      But the government agreed to cancel the contract at the big company's request. I don't see how the deliverable being the design instead of the ventilator itself would have changed that.
      - maxerickson 7y ago
        Sure. If I had a government slush fund to develop a low cost ventilator, I would try to structure the payments in the contract to be based on milestones with concrete deliverables. Not a tenuous agreement to buy a bunch of ventilators at below market price (it's implied in the article that the sales to the stockpile wouldn't justify the project for the company). There's of course a possibility that the government wrote the most aggressive contract they could find someone to work on. But I doubt that is what happened.
        pdonis 7y ago
        > There's of course a possibility that the government wrote the most aggressive contract they could find someone to work on. But I doubt that is what happened. Why do you doubt that?
      - burfog 7y ago
        Agreement to cancel could be made conditional upon publishing the design and releasing it into the public domain. If the big company detests that idea, well, they don't get out of the original contract.
        pdonis 7y ago
        > Agreement to cancel could be made conditional upon publishing the design and releasing it into the public domain. It probably could have been (that would depend on the details of the terms of the original contract), but it wasn't.
  - m0xte 7y ago
    There is no big or small company, just a government registered design and companies who can produce it if requested.
pdonis 7y ago
> Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. Exactly. Which means we should not be depending on governments to do it. This is exactly the sort of thing that private startup companies should be doing, without trying to involve the government's bloated and inefficient bureaucracy. > even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally For this particular crisis, yes. But not for the next one, if we start now.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  Wait... isn't that exactly what the article says they tried to do?
  - pdonis 7y ago
    The government tried, but then canceled the contract at the request of the big company that had bought out the small company they originally had the contract with.
    - neffy 7y ago
      Exactly. The issue in some sense isn't government, it's the corruption of government by corporations that have been allowed to become to big and to powerful, to the extent that the US Government itself has been deliberately defunded. (Sure, I know Government spending grows every year, but so does the money supply and corporate profits. Control for monetary expansion, and the US Government's portion of the economy has been steadily shrinking.)
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > The issue in some sense isn't government, it's the corruption of government Ok, so how do we keep the government from being corrupted? Nobody has yet solved that problem, and people have been trying for centuries. > Control for monetary expansion, and the US Government's portion of the economy has been steadily shrinking. The money supply is not the same as the economy. Government spending as a percentage of GDP, which is the closest estimate we have to "the size of the economy", has been growing, not shrinking.
dTal 7y ago
Have you considered that maybe broken inefficiency is not necessarily a property of governments in general? The local optimum might be to avoid having the government do things, but the global optimum is to fix your government.
- throwawaynerdy 7y ago
  If you look at history, I'm not sure it's possible for a government to get better. I'm not aware of any historical examples. Revolution can happen, but that means a new government.
  - germinalphrase 7y ago
    They clearly work well enough they every functioning society on earth utilizes one. What is your counterexample in which a government-less society flourished?
blunte 7y ago
This story, if accurate, is simply an illustration of how low-regulation capitalism works. "Working as intended." Profit is the only motive, and thus as long as the company/investors profit, then it is a success. The fact that national or global human well-being suffered is irrelevant (so long as we accept that capitalism (as currently implemented) is the right way). Now, there's a strong likelihood that the government officials with the power to prevent the sale of the company, or alternately the power to prevent the cancelation of the contract, were lobbied (and financially supported in various ways counter to the benefit of the people those officials represent). Otherwise, it's hard to imagine the government just casually agreeing to abandon a project that was already demonstrated to be near success (and the outcome of which was already demonstrated to be important).
- worik 7y ago
  The USA has the worst government that money can buy
- throwawaynerdy 7y ago
  Government patents and the heavily regulated medical cartels = capitalism? Not to be a Communist when I say "not real capitalism", but it seems there's no pro capitalism political party in the US.
  - amanaplanacanal 7y ago
    The Republicans certainly give lip service to it but both parties seem more corporatist than anything else.
Dobbs 7y ago
> Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. Mostly when your entire platform is that governments are broken so you do your utmost to make them broken to prove your point. All governments have issues, but there are many that aren't "broken" like the US, and more and more so the UK.

by m0xte 7y ago

maxerickson 7y ago

I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators. It wouldn't necessarily have been trivial for another company to pick the design up and produce it, but it would have been possible.

pdonis 7y ago
> I wonder how that project would have gone had the design been the deliverable instead of ventilators. The big company that bought the small one would simply have claimed that the design was their intellectual property and nobody else could build it.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Yes, that's one thing contracts are used for, to specify what you get in exchange for payments, in a durable way.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    But the government agreed to cancel the contract at the big company's request. I don't see how the deliverable being the design instead of the ventilator itself would have changed that.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      Sure. If I had a government slush fund to develop a low cost ventilator, I would try to structure the payments in the contract to be based on milestones with concrete deliverables. Not a tenuous agreement to buy a bunch of ventilators at below market price (it's implied in the article that the sales to the stockpile wouldn't justify the project for the company). There's of course a possibility that the government wrote the most aggressive contract they could find someone to work on. But I doubt that is what happened.
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > There's of course a possibility that the government wrote the most aggressive contract they could find someone to work on. But I doubt that is what happened. Why do you doubt that?
    - burfog 7y ago
      Agreement to cancel could be made conditional upon publishing the design and releasing it into the public domain. If the big company detests that idea, well, they don't get out of the original contract.
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > Agreement to cancel could be made conditional upon publishing the design and releasing it into the public domain. It probably could have been (that would depend on the details of the terms of the original contract), but it wasn't.
- m0xte 7y ago
  There is no big or small company, just a government registered design and companies who can produce it if requested.

pdonis 7y ago

> Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. Exactly. Which means we should not be depending on governments to do it. This is exactly the sort of thing that private startup companies should be doing, without trying to involve the government's bloated and inefficient bureaucracy. > even if they produced a design now we have supply chain problems globally For this particular crisis, yes. But not for the next one, if we start now.

fyfy18 7y ago
Wait... isn't that exactly what the article says they tried to do?
- pdonis 7y ago
  The government tried, but then canceled the contract at the request of the big company that had bought out the small company they originally had the contract with.
  - neffy 7y ago
    Exactly. The issue in some sense isn't government, it's the corruption of government by corporations that have been allowed to become to big and to powerful, to the extent that the US Government itself has been deliberately defunded. (Sure, I know Government spending grows every year, but so does the money supply and corporate profits. Control for monetary expansion, and the US Government's portion of the economy has been steadily shrinking.)
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > The issue in some sense isn't government, it's the corruption of government Ok, so how do we keep the government from being corrupted? Nobody has yet solved that problem, and people have been trying for centuries. > Control for monetary expansion, and the US Government's portion of the economy has been steadily shrinking. The money supply is not the same as the economy. Government spending as a percentage of GDP, which is the closest estimate we have to "the size of the economy", has been growing, not shrinking.

dTal 7y ago

Have you considered that maybe broken inefficiency is not necessarily a property of governments in general? The local optimum might be to avoid having the government do things, but the global optimum is to fix your government.

throwawaynerdy 7y ago
If you look at history, I'm not sure it's possible for a government to get better. I'm not aware of any historical examples. Revolution can happen, but that means a new government.
- germinalphrase 7y ago
  They clearly work well enough they every functioning society on earth utilizes one. What is your counterexample in which a government-less society flourished?

blunte 7y ago

This story, if accurate, is simply an illustration of how low-regulation capitalism works. "Working as intended." Profit is the only motive, and thus as long as the company/investors profit, then it is a success. The fact that national or global human well-being suffered is irrelevant (so long as we accept that capitalism (as currently implemented) is the right way). Now, there's a strong likelihood that the government officials with the power to prevent the sale of the company, or alternately the power to prevent the cancelation of the contract, were lobbied (and financially supported in various ways counter to the benefit of the people those officials represent). Otherwise, it's hard to imagine the government just casually agreeing to abandon a project that was already demonstrated to be near success (and the outcome of which was already demonstrated to be important).

worik 7y ago
The USA has the worst government that money can buy
throwawaynerdy 7y ago
Government patents and the heavily regulated medical cartels = capitalism? Not to be a Communist when I say "not real capitalism", but it seems there's no pro capitalism political party in the US.
- amanaplanacanal 7y ago
  The Republicans certainly give lip service to it but both parties seem more corporatist than anything else.

Dobbs 7y ago

> Governments are so utterly broken and inefficient that they can’t do it. Mostly when your entire platform is that governments are broken so you do your utmost to make them broken to prove your point. All governments have issues, but there are many that aren't "broken" like the US, and more and more so the UK.