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I worked for a while as a government contractor. I'd become disillusioned with libertarianism (no connection to the decision to take the job), and still am, but
by api 13y ago
I worked for a while as a government contractor. I'd become disillusioned with libertarianism (no connection to the decision to take the job), and still am, but that experience cured me of any leanings toward the sort of liberalism that sees government as a solution to much of anything.
The system was actively anti-meritocratic and the waste was simply incredible. They ran an entire data center at around 1% utilization. The electricity wasted alone must have been tens of thousands worth a month at least.
Contractors were the worst. People often complain about too many and overpaid government employees, and there certainly was that, but the contracting waste was where the real hemorrhaging was going on. I routinely saw outside firms hired to do things at many multiples of what it would have cost to have federal employees do it, or even to recruit new federal employees. These contractors would proceed to waste the money much more flagrantly than anyone inside the government did, would deliver barely-working solutions, and would then get contracted again to fix them. It was a routine thing. I started to really suspect that someone was getting kick-backs, but gross incompetence in the handling of outside contracting could explain it too.
- spiritplumber 13y agoThe key part of your comment is "would get contracted again to fix them". Contractors optimized for money-over-work. I had a similar situation where I politely mocked a competitor's product for breaking down in 3 months when mine would die after 2 years, and the other guy answered that they make a lot of money on service contracts (it's nautical equipment, so warranties work a little differently).
- acdha 13y agoI've seen that a lot and very similar stories at large companies and private organizations. The main lesson I've drawn is that we spend far too much time talking about isolated small examples and ignore the questions about the incentive structures which lead to it. (The classic example being the pressure to exhaust your budget by the end of the year, which has been joked about for ages but few organizations seem interested in fixing.) Most of the explanation is probably the obvious answer: fixing the broken system requires calling higher-status people on the carpet. Attacking a few teachers, clerks, etc. is much safer politically than asking exactly why the superintendent or CEO doesn't seem to care about efficiency absent a crisis.
- zzzeek 13y agoif you observed that the private contracting waste was where the real hemorrhaging was going on, then your problem was with all the privatized resources being paid with public money - essentially the vast influence of the "free market" on a public resource that is not well suited to traditional free market forces. This article is specifically about the failure of privatized resources, such as charter schools, private donations delivered directly to contractors with no public oversight or review for the purposes of improving the public good. It is about billionaires with no experience or justification for being at the center of a complex public system attempting to inject gigantic, ad-hoc donations into systems they don't understand, and failing.
- api 13y agoNot a bad point. If I, say, donated $100million to Microsoft to improve the Windows UI and did not know precisely where to put that money in the company and what that money should be doing, it probably would not fare much better. Still: the waste I saw was incredible. There is definitely a systemic incentive problem in government, not to mention a problem with private contracting and oversight.