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I never got that quote (Contact) Take the premise governments are incompetent and overspend. You neither win or lose by getting two. The incompetence is built

I never got that quote (Contact) Take the premise governments are incompetent and overspend. You neither win or lose by getting two. The incompetence is built into the second same price. Except you have the second early. Building early has a cost, but given the way governments work the incentive for re-election is being under budget and fixing problems only when they become so bad they have too. Building early intuitively sounds better to me.

dylan604 5y ago
>Take the premise governments are incompetent and overspend. Is that hard to understand? It's definitely pork. Some gov't official from a particular state drafts legislation to ensure that a company in the same state gets the money that legislation sets aside regardless if they are the best choice. That has to raise flags to everyone, right? Most gov't contractors know that they can charge multiples of what it would actually cost because it's the govt paying for it. No govt contract has ever said, "hey, we know we initially bid to do task for $x, but we actually were able to do it for $x-20%". Instead it is always, "oops, we grossly misjudged the scope of work and allowed people to continue to make changes to the request, so we're now 5x the original bid". They allow the requests to make these changes because they know that it is guarantee to keep the money flowing and people employeed.
- aaron695 5y ago
  Yes, but why is getting the second for the same price as the first bad? For major infrastructure I would expect the second to cost around the same price as the first. Materials, labour, time, bribes and corruption is all double. Any saving you might expect around paperwork and opportunity cost I don't mind, compared to waiting a decade then starting the process of getting it through government again. Even in the movie, (I don't know the book) think about the downtime if they had to fund the project again. And if you include 'in secret' it's even worse, because if the 3 letter agencies can do anything in secret for the same price as a public department that would me pretty amazing. Maybe the quote isn't cynical - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTUrdizRZyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTUrdizRZyw
  - zwily 5y ago
    I never took that line as “haha, the government was dumb not to get a volume discount”, but more as “haha, only the government would be dumb enough to build two of these ridiculous things”, but really it ended up kinda pro-government cause having the second worked out in the end.

dylan604 5y ago

>Take the premise governments are incompetent and overspend. Is that hard to understand? It's definitely pork. Some gov't official from a particular state drafts legislation to ensure that a company in the same state gets the money that legislation sets aside regardless if they are the best choice. That has to raise flags to everyone, right? Most gov't contractors know that they can charge multiples of what it would actually cost because it's the govt paying for it. No govt contract has ever said, "hey, we know we initially bid to do task for $x, but we actually were able to do it for $x-20%". Instead it is always, "oops, we grossly misjudged the scope of work and allowed people to continue to make changes to the request, so we're now 5x the original bid". They allow the requests to make these changes because they know that it is guarantee to keep the money flowing and people employeed.

aaron695 5y ago
Yes, but why is getting the second for the same price as the first bad? For major infrastructure I would expect the second to cost around the same price as the first. Materials, labour, time, bribes and corruption is all double. Any saving you might expect around paperwork and opportunity cost I don't mind, compared to waiting a decade then starting the process of getting it through government again. Even in the movie, (I don't know the book) think about the downtime if they had to fund the project again. And if you include 'in secret' it's even worse, because if the 3 letter agencies can do anything in secret for the same price as a public department that would me pretty amazing. Maybe the quote isn't cynical - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTUrdizRZyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTUrdizRZyw
- zwily 5y ago
  I never took that line as “haha, the government was dumb not to get a volume discount”, but more as “haha, only the government would be dumb enough to build two of these ridiculous things”, but really it ended up kinda pro-government cause having the second worked out in the end.