I would check out https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/ for information on other but analogous cost disease. Basically, no, i

I would check out https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/ for information on other but analogous cost disease. Basically, no, it's not just a meme. American managerial culture (or even Anglosphere at large, as alleged there) really does suck. And no amount of crafty mechanism design gets around the fact that least exploitable system seems to be one where the civil service isn't maimed and the work is done in-house. Basically government should fund some free software for various general purposes (or just do a decent UBI), and then any "consulting" should basically be public sector and free software sector exchanging best practices. The higher end academic consulting (ARPA) is legit[1] and should still exist, but it shouldn't be defense specific, and like drug bounties basically should exist to smooth over the "research...development...product" gap --- development is severely sort-changed current since outside of DARPA and ARPA-E so much research that doesn't contribute to someone's rent-seeking agenda just lies wasted. [1]: I suppose should say I once was an intern at https://galois.com/ https://galois.com/