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The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

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Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#101

Post by flavius29663 »

karaterobot wrote: post #31
flavius29663 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that? If you buy an engine, do you itemize by: engine block, alternator, water pump and starter? You might include in the requirements that the engine must come with all 4 extra elements, but you will pay for the whole engine. Now, if someone wants to be misleading, they could say the water pump was 1/4 of the price...

If the total R&D cost for all items is split across every single product equally, there's no way to tell how much of the $435 hammer is R&D for the hammer. It's a really weird way to do accounting, almost like they just didn't keep track of how much R&D they did for each item. And that makes you wonder if the amount they are charging is even real in the first place. In general it lowers confidence and makes you think…

> almost like they just didn't keep track of how much R&D they did for each item.

so what? Like another commenter has said, you bought the package, it's not your business how much each individual piece is actually worth. You pick the best bid and move on.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#102

Post by Raidion »

Alupis wrote: post #68
emodendroket wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the kitchen has many hazards that are not expected in a drive-through restaurant, and your point about how she held the coffee is presumably why the jury found the plaintiff 20% liable rather than 0%.

Yes, and now the "Caution - Hot" markings on the cup keep us all much, much safer. Any temperature above 100*F is going to burn . There is no safe temperature above 100*F that is not going to cause 2nd and 3rd degree burns.

I think I agree with you on principle, but temps higher than 100 are totally fine in a lot of cases. Hot tubs are at 102-106. 120°F takes you like 10 minutes to suffer serious burns. But 140° will cause burns in seconds. I've seen cooks handle stuff waaay hotter than 140 for a half secondish (grab a noodle from a pot of boiling water, poke a 160+° burger on a grill, etc). Obviously makes a big difference if you splash yourself a bit vs get a whole cup on you too.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#103

Post by oatmeal1 »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #98
oatmeal1 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean we have a trillion dollar fighter which is still dangerous for pilots. The small things are overblown and the big things even when they hit the news don't get appreciated.

>trillion dollar fighter Whut

[dead]

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#104

Post by bumby »

enkid wrote: post #58
ekidd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. This claim appears to contradict what the story says, as far as I can tell? He's the original: > The military bought the hammer, Kelman explained, bundled into one bulk purchase of many different spare parts. But when the contractors allocated their engineering expenses among the individual spare parts on the list-a b…

Sometimes what's written on paperwork can be silly because it doesn't really matter and the cost to verify or correct stuff that is estimated costs more than an estimate. Other times it has to be more precise than is possible, so you have to figure out a good way to "estimate" it. Being inaccurate isn't always problem if the costs outweigh the benefits of being accurate.

I think there’s an important distinction. It may not add value to whomever is writing the itemized expense, but more accurate data could add value to someone else who needs it for accountability or uses it to benchmark future work. You have to assess the entire value stream.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#105

Post by sidewndr46 »

unreal37 wrote: post #4

The so-called "real" explanation of the $600 hammer doesn't make the story any better. The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. Just because the extra $420 was "R&D expense" for something else, doesn't make the hammer any cheaper. Even in the most charitable explanation, this makes it impossible to know the real cost of anythin…

I met someone who spent six months in a SCIF waiting on a project to start. Go in every day and wait for 8 hours for some indication that work was available.

He said by the end of the "project" (which never involved any actual work) he had a complete space invaders clone written in Microsoft Excel with multiple levels, different game modes, difficulty levels, high scores, etc.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#106

Post by mattkrause »

karaterobot wrote: post #31
flavius29663 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that? If you buy an engine, do you itemize by: engine block, alternator, water pump and starter? You might include in the requirements that the engine must come with all 4 extra elements, but you will pay for the whole engine. Now, if someone wants to be misleading, they could say the water pump was 1/4 of the price...

If the total R&D cost for all items is split across every single product equally, there's no way to tell how much of the $435 hammer is R&D for the hammer. It's a really weird way to do accounting, almost like they just didn't keep track of how much R&D they did for each item. And that makes you wonder if the amount they are charging is even real in the first place. In general it lowers confidence and makes you think…

> almost like they just didn't keep track of how much R&D they did for each item.

That’s often almost the whole point!

Tracking the R&D effort for each item in the repair kit would add an enormous amount of overhead and accomplish essentially nothing. The numbers will be wild guesses and you’re going to have to make tons of ad hoc decisions about allocation anyway. Suppose you tweak the design so it a part can be attached with a special pin rather than a screw and spend an hour testing it. What’s the “right” allocation of time to the pin, hammer, part, and screw (that you’ve eliminated)?

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#107

Post by mattkrause »

cbsmith wrote: post #39
unreal37 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I acknowledged in my comment that even if the most charitable explanation was assumed, the method of accounting is misleading and makes determining the cost of anything impossible.

> The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. But the above statement wasn't true.

The article has a nice example of this in the B2 bomber. The first 21 planes cost $2B each. The next one costs $700M.

If, for some reason, we were to make a hundred or a thousand of them, the cost per plane would be even lower.

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#109

Post by tafda »

Similar to hospital pricing

Her screenshots, taken earlier this year, speak for themselves.

What they show are price hikes ranging from 575% to 675% being automatically generated by the hospital’s software.

The eye-popping increases are so routine, apparently, the software even displays the formula it uses to convert reasonable medical costs to billed amounts that are much, much higher.

For example, one screenshot is for sutures — that is, medical thread, a.k.a. stitches. Scripps’ system put the basic “cost per unit” at $19.30.

But the system said the “computed charge per unit” was $149.58. This is how much the patient and his or her insurer would be billed.

The system helpfully included a formula for reaching this amount: “$149.58 = $19.30 + ($19.30 x 675%).”

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-12-10/column-hea...

Re: The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

#110

Post by bitwize »

unreal37 wrote: post #4

The so-called "real" explanation of the $600 hammer doesn't make the story any better. The hammer did indeed cost $435. If the government wanted to buy another one, the contractor would have charged them an extra $435. Just because the extra $420 was "R&D expense" for something else, doesn't make the hammer any cheaper. Even in the most charitable explanation, this makes it impossible to know the real cost of anythin…

In Independence Day (1996), as President Thomas Whitemore and company are being led into the secret government alien lab, he wonders aloud where the funding for the lab came from, to which Julius Levinson (the father of Jeff Goldblum's character) quips, "You didn't think they actually paid $5000 for a hammer, or $30,000 for a toilet seat, did you?" Indicating those sums were actually being secretly diverted to fund black-budget initiatives like the alien lab.

Nice to see truth is not that far off from Independence Day.

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