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18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

brendansudol.com

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Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#111

Post by Jtsummers »

cortesoft wrote: post #97
Jtsummers wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So donating anything is elitist? Most things that are donated are things that someone else provides for a price, so you will always be "taking a job" from someone else. If you donate things then you're still buying it from someone, but giving it to someone that cannot afford them. So really, you're a surrogate purchaser. The problem comes in when you're donating time (via work) to a group that can afford to pay for…

Ok, so I took away some work that they were going to pay someone for. What, though, are they going to do with that money they saved? They are probably going to spend it on something else, which will employ somebody. It just shifts where that money is spent.

Right. If we provide teachers to an area, we might be eliminating the teachers already present. More likely we're supplementing them. This is filling a need that a local economy may not be able to sustain on its own.

If we provide volunteer laborer a to a farmer who can afford hired hands, we're reducing the income to those in the local unskilled labor market.

Those are two extremes and most labor-giving and goods-giving fall in between. But we need to determine where it falls to determine whether is a positive or a negative.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#112

Post by FF76 »

hamburglar wrote: post #99
FF76 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should plumbers be upset about their work being devalued? The problem stems from contributions that have a big impact. Big impact can be achieved by one person contributing a large amount, or many people contributing small amounts. Another comment referred to this article where a Florida business man donated a million t-shirts to Africa that resulted in the textile industry bankruptcy: http://content.time.com/time/…

I think the big mistake people make when criticizing this $1 contract is imagining the logical conclusion if everyone worked for $1 instead of realizing that this is a one-off giveaway and it has zero impact on actual rates for this type of work. This guy is not going to continue doing $1 contracts, and nobody is going to respond by reducing their prices to below what they deserve. People can give things away. The re…

It's okay to talk about everyone working for $1 after all it has to start from somewhere right?

I think the spirit of the complaining is more of a warning to keep an eye out for the trend rather than stop these one-offs altogether, but that's a lot harder to say and act on than "stop these one-offs".

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#113

Post by tomcam »

ac2u wrote: post #2

> It didn’t seem controversial to me. Writing some code to help out the government and the general public—what a unique opportunity! Y'know, if the author explained it along the lines of "I wanted to have a record of government work as a foot in the door", I think it would be an easier pill to swallow for the folks bidding at reasonable prices. However, the tone here is a little patronising if another bidder was just…

  However, the tone here is a little patronising if another bidder was just trying to get enough to cover the rent.
Didn't seem the slightest patronizing to me. Brendan just seemed delighted that he could help out. I love that.

More important, any bidder in any circumstance can be outbid by someone else and lose rent money in the process, right? To dictate any other outcome would require a depth of knowledge about the market and its bidders that no one party could possibly acquire reliably.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#114

Post by SolarNet »

arglebarnacle wrote: post #107
mintplant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it's not dismantled by the next administration to come into power.

I think it's going to be safe. It demonstrably saves much much more than it costs, so conservatives will likely support it from a cost cutting/reducing government "waste" perspective. Liberals will support it because it's smart and makes government run better. I think only an extremely cynical view would suggest this program isn't safe, a view in which conservatives intentionally dismantle good cost-saving government…

> a view in which conservatives intentionally dismantle good cost-saving government programs while leaving bad ones for the sole purpose of giving government a bad name.

Pretty sure giving government a bad name is the goal for many of the elected conservatives (perhaps not the people who voted for them).

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#115

Post by mtanski »

arglebarnacle wrote: post #107
mintplant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope it's not dismantled by the next administration to come into power.

I think it's going to be safe. It demonstrably saves much much more than it costs, so conservatives will likely support it from a cost cutting/reducing government "waste" perspective. Liberals will support it because it's smart and makes government run better. I think only an extremely cynical view would suggest this program isn't safe, a view in which conservatives intentionally dismantle good cost-saving government…

Has our legislative branch behaved rationally in the last few years? Recently they threatened forcing a default for unrelated (to budget) issues. And in the not to distant past they voted a law that prohibits Medicare from to using it's bargaining power to negotiate for lower drug prices. You know something that would save every tax payer quite a bit of money since Medicare is one of the larger budget line items.

Based on past behavior you don't have to be overly cynical to think a useful program like this could be eliminated.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#116

Post by tvanantwerp »

mtanski wrote: post #115
arglebarnacle wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be safe. It demonstrably saves much much more than it costs, so conservatives will likely support it from a cost cutting/reducing government "waste" perspective. Liberals will support it because it's smart and makes government run better. I think only an extremely cynical view would suggest this program isn't safe, a view in which conservatives intentionally dismantle good cost-saving government…

Has our legislative branch behaved rationally in the last few years? Recently they threatened forcing a default for unrelated (to budget) issues. And in the not to distant past they voted a law that prohibits Medicare from to using it's bargaining power to negotiate for lower drug prices. You know something that would save every tax payer quite a bit of money since Medicare is one of the larger budget line items. Bas…

Fortunately, 18F is under the GSA, which is the executive branch. It's entirely likely that most Congressmen don't know 18F exists.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#117

Post by noahkunin »

bicknergseng wrote: post #101

18F/USDS peeps... would you consider bounty or reward style programs that reward all open source contributors? Eg instead of bidding for a contract, keep an open list of tasks/bugs/full projects and reward contributors whose PR's are merged in some way? Yes, I know this monetizes what used to be free in a way and maybe goes against the "spirit" of open source, but practically speaking it feels like it'd be a huge win…

@bicknergseng -

18Fer here. The main issue here is how the Gov actually gets $ to that entity. There are lots of laws and rules that we need to obey about who we pay $ to - Gov doesn't have a ton of flexibility here. There was a reason why bidders had to be pre-registered.

That said, many of us want to continue to expand our engagement with the community. When it comes to bounty/reward style programs, the one I'm personally focused on figuring out first is a bug bounty program. Once we've figured out solutions for a bounty type program, you'll absolutely hear from us.

edited: small typo

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#118

Post by cortesoft »

stuartaxelowen wrote: post #98
cortesoft wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soup kitchens have the exact same risk. If those soup kitchens cook too much, they will drive restaurants out of business. Luckily, for both soup kitchens and programmers, this will never happen. There is more programming work to be done than programmers, and the markets aren't the same.

Soup kitchens and restaurants are not competitors.

And volunteer development work and professional development work are also not competitors.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#119

Post by djrogers »

kedean wrote: post #59
Jtsummers wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're basically name-calling, which is unproductive. While I'm not in agreement with OP, some levels and methods of altruism/volunteerism can end up being counterproductive. A certain level of free to a region is useful. Above that, or for too long, and you end up harming local farming and manufacturing, to the point where they may also depend on the free goods. I'm lacking specific articles and lines of research, b…

You may be thinking of this example: http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1987628,00... TLDR; sending a surplus of tshirts to Africa did nothing but crash local textile industries by introducing a surplus of existing, cheap product. Guy wanted to do good, didn't think about the consequences, and screwed up.

Except you clearly haven't read the article - he didn't send the shirts, he listened to the aid workers and criticism over his plan and decided against it.

The local textile crashes referred to in the economy were from cheap second hand imports, not aid.

Re: 18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1

#120

Post by gbhn »

FF76 wrote: post #95
hamburglar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ethics and morality of giving is kind of complicated. No, it's really quite simple. It's the ethics and morality (and circuitous justification) of being upset by others giving that's complicated. I built a friend of a friend a billing system for his fledgling business. Didn't charge a dime. I even got sucked in to support for much longer than I really wanted, since no good deed goes unpunished. Was it unethical…

> Should plumbers be upset about their work being devalued? The problem stems from contributions that have a big impact. Big impact can be achieved by one person contributing a large amount, or many people contributing small amounts. Another comment referred to this article where a Florida business man donated a million t-shirts to Africa that resulted in the textile industry bankruptcy: http://content.time.com/time/…

I think this is the most apropos objection: 18F is trying to trial a reliable source of contracting for small-scale IT work.

If it turns out that volunteerism is reliable, then awesome! 18F just discovered that by spending time to nail down detailed reqs the govt can let patriotic citizens contribute to their society by helping on projects! Everyone wins and things are awesome!

If on the other hand your intuition is that volunteerism is unreliable, then this just short-circuited an early experiment by 18F to figure out a reliable piecework system for doing IT development.

My intuition matches the second case, but there's an existence proof that the first might actually be correct. It'd be a totally awesome story if it was, so I have a hard time being sad. And even if it isn't, it may give 18F folks a think, as in "hmm, perhaps some of these projects are appropriate for volunteerism; is there a context where we can develop tools for that use case? universities? job training?"

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