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The problem is that the military doesn't give a damn about money. They co-developed the ship class with the first four ships that were built. Those four ships a

The problem is that the military doesn't give a damn about money. They co-developed the ship class with the first four ships that were built. Those four ships are worthless and each cost $600 million. It would cost another $2 billion dollars to make them combat ready. The philosophy of developing and building weapon systems is called "concurrency" and has been a subject of debate for 50 years. You can look at in different ways, but the cynical view, is that if the military first developed weapons systems then reported their final price to Congress, they would never get to run these wasteful programs. So instead, they promise a low price tag and then develop concurrently so that Congress falls into the sunk cost fallacy. This kind of "money doesn't matter we'll do it live" mentality happens all over the world. It plagued the F-35. It's resulting in a disaster with Canada's new Type 26 frigates. The simple solution is to ban all concurrency. You're given a budget, you design the system, then you build it. If you go over, we pay for the cost of the redesign, not the insane cost of upgrading half-broken ships or aircraft. The F-35 wasted more than $21 billion dollars on worthless aircraft https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2017/10/21-billion-worth-of-f-35-concurrency-orphans/ https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2017/10/21-billion-worth-of-f-...

Grakel 5y ago
Meh. Is government expenditure bad? The money flows into the economy and technology is researched and developed. It's not like the money would be spent elsewhere, it's all debt we're just going to hold on to until inflation renders it irrelevant.
- samcheng 5y ago
  If you're going to be spending billions of dollars, would you rather have a working ship afterwards, or not? Accountability DOES matter.
- TheDudeMan 5y ago
  The greater the government expenditure, the greater the taxes.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    That's not literally true, obviously. There's plenty of money for them to go after if they were actually worried about government debt. I think the big secret is that it doesn't really matter as long as the debt growth rate doesn't become shocking.
    - coliveira 5y ago
      No, the real secret is that the US government controls dollar creation. At the sign of any problem in the economy, they create more cash and give it to bankers, who on their turn put it in the hands of investors, who use it to buy assets around the world, increasing the assets and profits of American businesses. That's why the US will use any dirt trick to maintain the dollar supremacy.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    If our money was actually backed by something, maybe. As it stands though the government doesn't really need to tax more money to spend more, even banks are allowed to create money for free now.
    - lupire 5y ago
      Govt spending creates inflation which is a tax on everyone. Sometimes its obvious, like Quantirative Easing, and sometimes it's subtle, like wasting human labor and natural resources on worthless stuff/activity instead of value creation. Formal taxation just redistributes the pain.
- pm90 5y ago
  Government expenditure in general isn’t bad… if it delivers on what it’s trying to. Like it’s great we get the research and tech benefits (if that’s really what happens) but if we’re unable to deliver on producing best in class armaments, we risk falling behind adversaries that do develop those capabilities.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Yes, absolutely.
- treeman79 5y ago
  At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
  - lupire 5y ago
    This reminds of the Feynman quote about outsiders to a field making obvious statements a about an intellectual idea and thinking they had a clever insight.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I'm sorry, I don't see your connection. It was a snide aside by an economist (I believe a Nobel winning one), but it wasn't dumb.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  Generally overbudget projects have other consequences of poor planning such as technical defects. See big dig, F35 helmet annoxia issue.
- katbyte 5y ago
  There are better things to spend it on: infrastructure, education, health, space, and more
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Government money isn't finite and doesn't get shuffled from budget to budget in some sort of rational discussion. It's all just numbers and politics.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  It could go to a Basic Income for all low income Americans.
  - Grakel 5y ago
    They could do both. Government money isn't finite, that's my point. They certainly would never have a meeting where they said, ok we cut a trillion from the military, what should we move it to? It doesn't work like that.
  - Telemakhos 5y ago
    It could also be returned to the taxpayers. Instead of inventing new ways to spend money, the government could just stop taking so much from the people who earned it.
- coliveira 5y ago
  First of all is money spent on equipment to kill people. Second, it's money that is not spent on things that really matter, like education, health care, green energy, etc.
  - lupire 5y ago
    very little of it is actual weapons thar sboot at people. most is detterence, and thr actual killing things are cheap like drones.
  - gshubert17 5y ago
    Exactly: US President Eisenhower said in a 1953 speech, Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercrossofiron.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercr...
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Money spent on equipment to discourage China from killing people.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  It's taking money away from the people who sacrificed a part of their life for it and giving it to people who place zero importance on it.... It's literally parasitic. Are you serious?
  - Grakel 5y ago
    Taxes don't equal government expenditure. It's not a inflow-outflow system.
- gumby 5y ago
  Look up the economist Basquiat: you can raise the GDP by tossing bricks through windows — money will be spent replacing /repairing them which contributes to the GDP. But that same money could have been spent differently on things people like, or invested. These ships, and the structure of military spending, is more like Basquiat’s example.
  - magicsmoke 5y ago
    There's another way to frame that argument. The spike in window repairs and glass demand will incentivize glass factories to invest in technological advancements to make cheaper and better glass. Investments they would not have made otherwise because there wasn't enough demand to spread the fixed investment cost across and make it profitable. After all the windows are repaired, the glass factories still retain their capital investment and technical knowledge, are producing glass cheaper than before, out-competing their counterparts abroad, and maintaining a global technological lead in glass production. Bastiat's parable doesn't account for the sticky effects of capital investment. The glass makers in his stories only replace windows with old techniques and never use the spike in demand as an opportunity for technological development.
    - gumby 5y ago
      It distorts investment away from the direction people would otherwise prefer to invest in.
      - magicsmoke 5y ago
        There's a global debate happening today about whether complete free market allocation of investment is best, or whether East Asian state-lead investments into technological advancements is. If the free market was all we need, then why should the government invest into scientific research?
        gumby 5y ago
        That debate has gone on since the 17th century at least. Obviously neither extremum is effective.
pm90 5y ago
What keeps them from changing or trying out new ways of designing/building? Is it entrenched interests that resist any changes? Isn’t it in the best interest of everyone to actually deliver on projects? If they don’t how is it that they continue to be relied on by the military? Apologies if I’m being incredibly naive, I have no experience with what the military procurement world looks like.
- nradov 5y ago
  They try out new ways of designing and building on every major program. Sometimes the new ways work, sometimes they don't.
- CapricornNoble 5y ago
  >>>What keeps them from changing or trying out new ways of designing/building? Is it entrenched interests that resist any changes? There are immense barriers to entry. When I tried to boot-strap my defense startup, a Lieutenant Colonel I knew (also a VP at a defense company) told me it would take over a year just to do the paperwork to sell stuff to DoD. It's why I focused on South-East Asia. As long as I steered clear of ITAR products, I felt corruption in SEA was easier to navigate that US bureaucracy. The requirements are even more onerous if you are producing anything of a sensitive nature. My dad knew a business owner in the Gainesville area who got out of the drone-making business because the physical security upgrades that his DoD client required were such a burden. Successfully navigating these hurdles requires program managers with niche domain knowledge on the DoD's procurement, certification, and funding processes. >>>Isn’t it in the best interest of everyone to actually deliver on projects? If they don’t how is it that they continue to be relied on by the military? Because of the issues I mentioned above, oftentimes there are few companies who have both the infrastructure and the domain knowledge to even attempt to deliver a product. Some of the engineering problems are also REALLY difficult. But if Lockheed Martin sucks at making a fighter jet, and Boeing sucks at making a fighter jet.....who do you turn to? If you need a jet engine, you go to Pratt & Whitney or you go to Rolls Royce. No amount of VC startup incubation is gonna give you a reliable high-bypass turbofan engine in a reasonable timeframe. The Chinese have been throwing resources at that particular problem (fighter jet engines) for decades and they are STILL behind the US and Russian offerings. If the Navy doesn't like its Little Crappy Ships....it's not like there is an abundance of efficient shipyards in the US anymore. The few existing ones are practically on life-support and reliant on Navy contracts. A good shipyard needs experienced blue-collar tradesmen (welders, electricians, etc.), which are already in short supply in the US. So again this is another field that is not quickly rectified or disrupted. As a consequence the government is stuck saying "Sigh....here's another bag of money....try to get it right this time." At this point, pushing funding to trade schools in order to get a bunch of noobs into the shipyards, and then being tolerant of them producing "good enough" ships for a decade, would be an improvement over our current situation IMO... The government is at fault too. We've suffered from a lack of consistent strategic vision, and frequent adjustments to policies, budgets, and tactics lead to engineering changes that are massively expensive. The military is constantly moving the goalposts, so industry responds by rolling its eyes and saying "You want it to do WHAT?!?....Yeah, that's gonna cost another $100 million..." There's also an incestuous relationship between program managers who are military officers or Federal government employees, and industry. The .mil/.gov types leave the service and then, after a short cool-off period to not run afoul of the laws, get hired by the same companies they were pushing billions of dollars towards. It's the same revolving door problem that Wall Street and the SEC have. It's a depressing mess and I don't expect it to get better until the bodies REALLY start to pile up and the American populace turns its rage towards The Powers That Be instead of each other.
miketery 5y ago
I’ve taken to look at these programs as a jobs programs, and as an empire tax paid to the US (eg. F35 project). Basically it’s three birds with one stone, you develop weapons and technology (necessary given international affairs), you provide jobs (important for senators and congressman to make their constituents happy), and funnel international money as a brother tax (we’re in this together). Yes it’s inefficient, but it greases the wheels. Similar can be said about the ~$3B/year given to each Israel and Egypt. Keeps the peace, supports strategic interests, and pays for defense (military tech, and jobs - since all funds are spent on US defense).
- DSingularity 5y ago
  The 3 billion that goes to Israel is used to maintain its military edge over all of its neighbors. The 3 billion which goes to Egypt goes to the military-class to maintain its hold over the country.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    The money to Egypt was promised by Carter to create a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. Frankly, there are like 15 countries in the Middle East. If we could just pay all of them 3 billion a year to bring peace there I would vote for that in a second.
    - DSingularity 5y ago
      Paying dictators ruins the lives of millions of Arabs. Many are imprisoned and tortured by the security state. The majority are condemned to lives where they can barely afford to live and have very little hope of educating their children to improve their outcomes. But sure, keep pretending like the problems in the Middle East are just a few countries short of 3 billion.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        I'm not saying the Middle East's problems are fixable with 3 billion a year. I'm saying 3 billion/country/year is cheap to fix problems in the Middle East. And it fixed the series of wars between Egypt and Israel that had lasted, what, a generation? But yes, Syria is a mess and cannot be fixed by writing a check. Which is too bad, because it would be great if it could be. And the entire Arabian peninsula has too much money for a 3 billion/year bribe to change things. But if raising 3 billion a year could stop the suffering of millions of people in Syria, my guess is that it could be done very quickly.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
My friend, who just had a baby, is struggling to pay the IRS the 30k he owes them and the gov't is doing stuff like this and the f-35. It makes me so angry to see him struggling because of his tax debt and know all of his work is being thrown away on stuff like this. The project I'm currently working on is millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule and managed by people whose previous experience was managing I.T. help desks. But tax money printer go brrrr so there's no accountability!!!! I'm wondering when the right time is to water tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants.
- DSingularity 5y ago
  What are you proposing? Why can’t we put that energy into educating the public to break the deadlock of Congress as this is the device that is exploited by the corrupt to rob the people, instead you want civil war and murder in the country with the most destructive power in the world?
  - nickthemagicman 5y ago
    What do people need to be educated about? That Congress is gerrymandering their districts and stealing their votes to stay in office until they're a hundred years old? The the only way to win elections is by big dollars and we have a two party system to represent 300 million people with candidates picked by the elite? That national inequality is at levels never seen before, and big money interests control more and more of the country? That black rock is trying to buy up all the real estate? That the federal reserve just printed 40% of all dollars in circulation last year and inflation is increasing? Everyone is aware of this stuff and more. This is not fresh news. Maybe we need to just tell the presidents that started and continued the Iraq wars resulting in the killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the middle east....tell the presidents who sent 60K American kids to die in Vietnam plus countless Vietnamese....tell the FBI,CIA,TSA,NSA,DEA,DoD,ATF,National guard, state police, city police, county police (police who are militarizing with military vehicles and military weapons) all groups whose are mandated to deliver violence to you or your families if you disobey. Maybe we need to just tell all of these authority groups to just chill out man! Peace doesn't work with human beings because humans are primates. Our closest evolutionary ancestors are Chimps...who rip the hands and feet and genitals off of their enemies and leave them to die in the jungle(google it). Only fear of retribution demands respect in the primate world. And the metaphorical neutering of the American population by advocates for peace and love and putting down our arms...does not demand respect. As evidenced throughout a quarter million years of human history, which has been filled almost entirely(until recently)... with bloodshed, crushing misery, and violent deposition of dictators...because the rich and powerful love to crush their foot on the neck of the peasantry and lord their power over them...there will be bloodshed. It's just a matter of time and when the people get sick of the abuses by the rich and powerful. This country is no longer a Democracy. Your vote no longer matters. Voting is propaganda, we're just waiting for enough people to suffer, to begin to question it.. Millions of people are estimated to be evicted in the coming months. Winter is coming in the upcoming years.
nradov 5y ago
Unfortunately fixed price contracts don't work for new cutting edge defense systems. No major defense contractor would ever take on that level of risk so there would be zero bids. Fixed price contracts only become practical after the R&D work is complete. But you're right that concurrency has largely been a failure.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > Unfortunately fixed price contracts don't work for new cutting edge defense systems. New defense systems don't actually have to be cutting edge. The cutting edge stuff is more properly deployed as upgrades to existing systems (this tightens the feedback loop that produces learning). By the time the tech is influencing newly designed systems, it shouldn't be cutting edge anymore. Anyone complaining about how this slows the adoption and deployment of new technology should take a close look at what made the F-16 and F-18 successful platforms for so long. Not only were they regularly upgraded, but in many ways their upgradability was upgraded over time, and new planes coming off the assembly line were far from being frozen in time, but rather reflected an evolution of those platforms.
  - nradov 5y ago
    No that's not how it works in the real world. You're never going to get something like a 5th generation fighter by making incremental improvements to 4th generation systems. At some point you run out of headroom and have to start over from scratch in order to maintain a qualitative advantage over potential adversaries. This is high risk and doesn't always work but there is no alternative.
    - webmaven 5y ago
      I'm not saying that incremental improvements are the sole strategy. I'm saying that before you design a 5th gen system, the tech[0] you want to use should be proven as an upgrade to a 4th gen system. I'm saying that running out of headroom is a normal part of the lifecycle, and trying to cram in the latest everything into a newly designed system in an attempt to put off the inevitable is futile and counterproductive. I'm also saying that you may not run out of headroom as soon as you think. [0] Note that I'm aware that I am drawing a distinction here between 'tech' and 'design' that isn't really so clearcut.
thoughtstheseus 5y ago
That’s true of the past but not the present. The U.S. military is clearly and consistently including cost in its decisions today. Anyone who argues against this simply hasn’t looked into it.

Grakel 5y ago

Meh. Is government expenditure bad? The money flows into the economy and technology is researched and developed. It's not like the money would be spent elsewhere, it's all debt we're just going to hold on to until inflation renders it irrelevant.

samcheng 5y ago
If you're going to be spending billions of dollars, would you rather have a working ship afterwards, or not? Accountability DOES matter.
TheDudeMan 5y ago
The greater the government expenditure, the greater the taxes.
- Grakel 5y ago
  That's not literally true, obviously. There's plenty of money for them to go after if they were actually worried about government debt. I think the big secret is that it doesn't really matter as long as the debt growth rate doesn't become shocking.
  - coliveira 5y ago
    No, the real secret is that the US government controls dollar creation. At the sign of any problem in the economy, they create more cash and give it to bankers, who on their turn put it in the hands of investors, who use it to buy assets around the world, increasing the assets and profits of American businesses. That's why the US will use any dirt trick to maintain the dollar supremacy.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  If our money was actually backed by something, maybe. As it stands though the government doesn't really need to tax more money to spend more, even banks are allowed to create money for free now.
  - lupire 5y ago
    Govt spending creates inflation which is a tax on everyone. Sometimes its obvious, like Quantirative Easing, and sometimes it's subtle, like wasting human labor and natural resources on worthless stuff/activity instead of value creation. Formal taxation just redistributes the pain.
pm90 5y ago
Government expenditure in general isn’t bad… if it delivers on what it’s trying to. Like it’s great we get the research and tech benefits (if that’s really what happens) but if we’re unable to deliver on producing best in class armaments, we risk falling behind adversaries that do develop those capabilities.
- Grakel 5y ago
  Yes, absolutely.
treeman79 5y ago
At one of our dinners, Milton recalled traveling to an Asian country in the 1960s and visiting a worksite where a new canal was being built. He was shocked to see that, instead of modern tractors and earth movers, the workers had shovels. He asked why there were so few machines. The government bureaucrat explained: “You don’t understand. This is a jobs program.” To which Milton replied: “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
- lupire 5y ago
  This reminds of the Feynman quote about outsiders to a field making obvious statements a about an intellectual idea and thinking they had a clever insight.
  - HWR_14 5y ago
    I'm sorry, I don't see your connection. It was a snide aside by an economist (I believe a Nobel winning one), but it wasn't dumb.
morpheos137 5y ago
Generally overbudget projects have other consequences of poor planning such as technical defects. See big dig, F35 helmet annoxia issue.
katbyte 5y ago
There are better things to spend it on: infrastructure, education, health, space, and more
- Grakel 5y ago
  Government money isn't finite and doesn't get shuffled from budget to budget in some sort of rational discussion. It's all just numbers and politics.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
It could go to a Basic Income for all low income Americans.
- Grakel 5y ago
  They could do both. Government money isn't finite, that's my point. They certainly would never have a meeting where they said, ok we cut a trillion from the military, what should we move it to? It doesn't work like that.
- Telemakhos 5y ago
  It could also be returned to the taxpayers. Instead of inventing new ways to spend money, the government could just stop taking so much from the people who earned it.
coliveira 5y ago
First of all is money spent on equipment to kill people. Second, it's money that is not spent on things that really matter, like education, health care, green energy, etc.
- lupire 5y ago
  very little of it is actual weapons thar sboot at people. most is detterence, and thr actual killing things are cheap like drones.
- gshubert17 5y ago
  Exactly: US President Eisenhower said in a 1953 speech, Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercrossofiron.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercr...
- Grakel 5y ago
  Money spent on equipment to discourage China from killing people.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
It's taking money away from the people who sacrificed a part of their life for it and giving it to people who place zero importance on it.... It's literally parasitic. Are you serious?
- Grakel 5y ago
  Taxes don't equal government expenditure. It's not a inflow-outflow system.
gumby 5y ago
Look up the economist Basquiat: you can raise the GDP by tossing bricks through windows — money will be spent replacing /repairing them which contributes to the GDP. But that same money could have been spent differently on things people like, or invested. These ships, and the structure of military spending, is more like Basquiat’s example.
- magicsmoke 5y ago
  There's another way to frame that argument. The spike in window repairs and glass demand will incentivize glass factories to invest in technological advancements to make cheaper and better glass. Investments they would not have made otherwise because there wasn't enough demand to spread the fixed investment cost across and make it profitable. After all the windows are repaired, the glass factories still retain their capital investment and technical knowledge, are producing glass cheaper than before, out-competing their counterparts abroad, and maintaining a global technological lead in glass production. Bastiat's parable doesn't account for the sticky effects of capital investment. The glass makers in his stories only replace windows with old techniques and never use the spike in demand as an opportunity for technological development.
  - gumby 5y ago
    It distorts investment away from the direction people would otherwise prefer to invest in.
    - magicsmoke 5y ago
      There's a global debate happening today about whether complete free market allocation of investment is best, or whether East Asian state-lead investments into technological advancements is. If the free market was all we need, then why should the government invest into scientific research?
      - gumby 5y ago
        That debate has gone on since the 17th century at least. Obviously neither extremum is effective.

pm90 5y ago

What keeps them from changing or trying out new ways of designing/building? Is it entrenched interests that resist any changes? Isn’t it in the best interest of everyone to actually deliver on projects? If they don’t how is it that they continue to be relied on by the military? Apologies if I’m being incredibly naive, I have no experience with what the military procurement world looks like.

nradov 5y ago
They try out new ways of designing and building on every major program. Sometimes the new ways work, sometimes they don't.
CapricornNoble 5y ago
>>>What keeps them from changing or trying out new ways of designing/building? Is it entrenched interests that resist any changes? There are immense barriers to entry. When I tried to boot-strap my defense startup, a Lieutenant Colonel I knew (also a VP at a defense company) told me it would take over a year just to do the paperwork to sell stuff to DoD. It's why I focused on South-East Asia. As long as I steered clear of ITAR products, I felt corruption in SEA was easier to navigate that US bureaucracy. The requirements are even more onerous if you are producing anything of a sensitive nature. My dad knew a business owner in the Gainesville area who got out of the drone-making business because the physical security upgrades that his DoD client required were such a burden. Successfully navigating these hurdles requires program managers with niche domain knowledge on the DoD's procurement, certification, and funding processes. >>>Isn’t it in the best interest of everyone to actually deliver on projects? If they don’t how is it that they continue to be relied on by the military? Because of the issues I mentioned above, oftentimes there are few companies who have both the infrastructure and the domain knowledge to even attempt to deliver a product. Some of the engineering problems are also REALLY difficult. But if Lockheed Martin sucks at making a fighter jet, and Boeing sucks at making a fighter jet.....who do you turn to? If you need a jet engine, you go to Pratt & Whitney or you go to Rolls Royce. No amount of VC startup incubation is gonna give you a reliable high-bypass turbofan engine in a reasonable timeframe. The Chinese have been throwing resources at that particular problem (fighter jet engines) for decades and they are STILL behind the US and Russian offerings. If the Navy doesn't like its Little Crappy Ships....it's not like there is an abundance of efficient shipyards in the US anymore. The few existing ones are practically on life-support and reliant on Navy contracts. A good shipyard needs experienced blue-collar tradesmen (welders, electricians, etc.), which are already in short supply in the US. So again this is another field that is not quickly rectified or disrupted. As a consequence the government is stuck saying "Sigh....here's another bag of money....try to get it right this time." At this point, pushing funding to trade schools in order to get a bunch of noobs into the shipyards, and then being tolerant of them producing "good enough" ships for a decade, would be an improvement over our current situation IMO... The government is at fault too. We've suffered from a lack of consistent strategic vision, and frequent adjustments to policies, budgets, and tactics lead to engineering changes that are massively expensive. The military is constantly moving the goalposts, so industry responds by rolling its eyes and saying "You want it to do WHAT?!?....Yeah, that's gonna cost another $100 million..." There's also an incestuous relationship between program managers who are military officers or Federal government employees, and industry. The .mil/.gov types leave the service and then, after a short cool-off period to not run afoul of the laws, get hired by the same companies they were pushing billions of dollars towards. It's the same revolving door problem that Wall Street and the SEC have. It's a depressing mess and I don't expect it to get better until the bodies REALLY start to pile up and the American populace turns its rage towards The Powers That Be instead of each other.

miketery 5y ago

I’ve taken to look at these programs as a jobs programs, and as an empire tax paid to the US (eg. F35 project). Basically it’s three birds with one stone, you develop weapons and technology (necessary given international affairs), you provide jobs (important for senators and congressman to make their constituents happy), and funnel international money as a brother tax (we’re in this together). Yes it’s inefficient, but it greases the wheels. Similar can be said about the ~$3B/year given to each Israel and Egypt. Keeps the peace, supports strategic interests, and pays for defense (military tech, and jobs - since all funds are spent on US defense).

DSingularity 5y ago
The 3 billion that goes to Israel is used to maintain its military edge over all of its neighbors. The 3 billion which goes to Egypt goes to the military-class to maintain its hold over the country.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  The money to Egypt was promised by Carter to create a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. Frankly, there are like 15 countries in the Middle East. If we could just pay all of them 3 billion a year to bring peace there I would vote for that in a second.
  - DSingularity 5y ago
    Paying dictators ruins the lives of millions of Arabs. Many are imprisoned and tortured by the security state. The majority are condemned to lives where they can barely afford to live and have very little hope of educating their children to improve their outcomes. But sure, keep pretending like the problems in the Middle East are just a few countries short of 3 billion.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      I'm not saying the Middle East's problems are fixable with 3 billion a year. I'm saying 3 billion/country/year is cheap to fix problems in the Middle East. And it fixed the series of wars between Egypt and Israel that had lasted, what, a generation? But yes, Syria is a mess and cannot be fixed by writing a check. Which is too bad, because it would be great if it could be. And the entire Arabian peninsula has too much money for a 3 billion/year bribe to change things. But if raising 3 billion a year could stop the suffering of millions of people in Syria, my guess is that it could be done very quickly.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

My friend, who just had a baby, is struggling to pay the IRS the 30k he owes them and the gov't is doing stuff like this and the f-35. It makes me so angry to see him struggling because of his tax debt and know all of his work is being thrown away on stuff like this. The project I'm currently working on is millions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule and managed by people whose previous experience was managing I.T. help desks. But tax money printer go brrrr so there's no accountability!!!! I'm wondering when the right time is to water tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants.

DSingularity 5y ago
What are you proposing? Why can’t we put that energy into educating the public to break the deadlock of Congress as this is the device that is exploited by the corrupt to rob the people, instead you want civil war and murder in the country with the most destructive power in the world?
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  What do people need to be educated about? That Congress is gerrymandering their districts and stealing their votes to stay in office until they're a hundred years old? The the only way to win elections is by big dollars and we have a two party system to represent 300 million people with candidates picked by the elite? That national inequality is at levels never seen before, and big money interests control more and more of the country? That black rock is trying to buy up all the real estate? That the federal reserve just printed 40% of all dollars in circulation last year and inflation is increasing? Everyone is aware of this stuff and more. This is not fresh news. Maybe we need to just tell the presidents that started and continued the Iraq wars resulting in the killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the middle east....tell the presidents who sent 60K American kids to die in Vietnam plus countless Vietnamese....tell the FBI,CIA,TSA,NSA,DEA,DoD,ATF,National guard, state police, city police, county police (police who are militarizing with military vehicles and military weapons) all groups whose are mandated to deliver violence to you or your families if you disobey. Maybe we need to just tell all of these authority groups to just chill out man! Peace doesn't work with human beings because humans are primates. Our closest evolutionary ancestors are Chimps...who rip the hands and feet and genitals off of their enemies and leave them to die in the jungle(google it). Only fear of retribution demands respect in the primate world. And the metaphorical neutering of the American population by advocates for peace and love and putting down our arms...does not demand respect. As evidenced throughout a quarter million years of human history, which has been filled almost entirely(until recently)... with bloodshed, crushing misery, and violent deposition of dictators...because the rich and powerful love to crush their foot on the neck of the peasantry and lord their power over them...there will be bloodshed. It's just a matter of time and when the people get sick of the abuses by the rich and powerful. This country is no longer a Democracy. Your vote no longer matters. Voting is propaganda, we're just waiting for enough people to suffer, to begin to question it.. Millions of people are estimated to be evicted in the coming months. Winter is coming in the upcoming years.

nradov 5y ago

Unfortunately fixed price contracts don't work for new cutting edge defense systems. No major defense contractor would ever take on that level of risk so there would be zero bids. Fixed price contracts only become practical after the R&D work is complete. But you're right that concurrency has largely been a failure.

webmaven 5y ago
> Unfortunately fixed price contracts don't work for new cutting edge defense systems. New defense systems don't actually have to be cutting edge. The cutting edge stuff is more properly deployed as upgrades to existing systems (this tightens the feedback loop that produces learning). By the time the tech is influencing newly designed systems, it shouldn't be cutting edge anymore. Anyone complaining about how this slows the adoption and deployment of new technology should take a close look at what made the F-16 and F-18 successful platforms for so long. Not only were they regularly upgraded, but in many ways their upgradability was upgraded over time, and new planes coming off the assembly line were far from being frozen in time, but rather reflected an evolution of those platforms.
- nradov 5y ago
  No that's not how it works in the real world. You're never going to get something like a 5th generation fighter by making incremental improvements to 4th generation systems. At some point you run out of headroom and have to start over from scratch in order to maintain a qualitative advantage over potential adversaries. This is high risk and doesn't always work but there is no alternative.
  - webmaven 5y ago
    I'm not saying that incremental improvements are the sole strategy. I'm saying that before you design a 5th gen system, the tech[0] you want to use should be proven as an upgrade to a 4th gen system. I'm saying that running out of headroom is a normal part of the lifecycle, and trying to cram in the latest everything into a newly designed system in an attempt to put off the inevitable is futile and counterproductive. I'm also saying that you may not run out of headroom as soon as you think. [0] Note that I'm aware that I am drawing a distinction here between 'tech' and 'design' that isn't really so clearcut.

thoughtstheseus 5y ago

That’s true of the past but not the present. The U.S. military is clearly and consistently including cost in its decisions today. Anyone who argues against this simply hasn’t looked into it.