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The myth of the $600 hammer (1998)

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

#151

Post by lamontcg »

unreal37 wrote: post #11
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…

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.

If you own a car how much did the engine in the car cost you to buy?

Unless you've done an engine swap recently you probably can't answer that, because you bought the whole car, and the engine came with it.

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

#152

Post by tempodox »

ekidd wrote: post #9
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…

> 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…

That still obfuscates the actual cost of things, which is the exact opposite of accounting, if you think about it.

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

#153

Post by harry8 »

SkipperCat wrote: post #99
harry8 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hot coffee lawsuit ... So much lawyers' propaganda. We are engineers here. We are aware that coffee is water that boils at 100 degrees centigrade and gets no hotter than that. Every damn idiot and those more intelligent know full well that writing "Caution: contents hot" in microscopic text does absolutely nothing to make recently boiled water more safe. Sure we should all feel sorry for someone who is badly bu…

From Wikipedia... "McDonalds had received more than 700 reports of people burned by their coffee to varying degrees of severity". I remember reading a lot about this. It was the fact that McDonalds knew they had a dangerous product but wanted to keep it "hot" at the drive-thru so it would still be drinkable after people finished their car rides. That was a large factor of why the courts found McDonalds 80% liable in…

yeah if you want to argue the cups were rubbish and negligently so, fine. Go right ahead, there /may/ be a sensible discussion to be had there somewhere. It is at least possible

"Caution contents hot" Does not seem to be any way an engineering fix for this though, does it? Like seriously, why do you think that is written there? People expect cold? That fixes it? The mind boggles. So many legal fees on garbage like this.

But yeah, the lawyers got everyone jumping to their BS and so the zeitgeist will go into wikipedia.

Caution: contents silly.

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

#154

Post by harry8 »

emodendroket wrote: post #139
harry8 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hot coffee lawsuit ... So much lawyers' propaganda. We are engineers here. We are aware that coffee is water that boils at 100 degrees centigrade and gets no hotter than that. Every damn idiot and those more intelligent know full well that writing "Caution: contents hot" in microscopic text does absolutely nothing to make recently boiled water more safe. Sure we should all feel sorry for someone who is badly bu…

If there was nothing wrong and nothing that could be done how come they switched to a different, more rigid cup that was less likely to spill in the same way after they lost the lawsuit?

"caution: contents hot"

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

#155

Post by tjoff »

throw0101c wrote: post #97
logdap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a myth within a myth. The coffee was industry standard temperature, they still serve coffee that hot today (Wikipedia says as much.) The lawsuit was justified though, because the cup design was defective. It shouldn't have collapsed like it did.

> The coffee was industry standard temperature, they still serve coffee that hot today (Wikipedia says as much.) Which is probably too hot. See "A Review of Hot Beverage Temperatures—Satisfying Consumer Preference and Safety": * https://ift.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1750-38...

Why? All this debate on how hot you like to drink your coffee etc. is completely irrelevant.

You don't chug your coffee on your way from the counter. You probably have some other items that you consume before you even start sipping on the coffee.

If someone serves me coffee at the perfect consumption temperature I'm going to be annoyed that it is way too cold and it is for sure going to be disgustingly cold at the time I actually consume it.

The correct temperature is supposed to be way too warm for consumption. Then you can sip at it while it is still too warm to drink comfortably while you "wait" until it is at your preferred consumption temperature (which varies wildly due to personal preference).

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

#157

Post by melagonster »

harry8 wrote: post #89
steveklabnik wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hot coffee lawsuit is the first thing I think of here. Heck even the name is like… whew.

> The hot coffee lawsuit ... So much lawyers' propaganda. We are engineers here. We are aware that coffee is water that boils at 100 degrees centigrade and gets no hotter than that. Every damn idiot and those more intelligent know full well that writing "Caution: contents hot" in microscopic text does absolutely nothing to make recently boiled water more safe. Sure we should all feel sorry for someone who is badly bu…

she only required medical fee. but jury decided company should get punishment.

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

#158

Post by dmurray »

db48x wrote: post #149
lmm wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a problem with a congressperson taking the accounting at face value and assuming it means what it says. Our accounting should be trustworthy.

It was purely a stunt for the congresscritter in question; they were not fooled into thinking that the hammer had really cost that much. If they had been honest, they would have talked about how the repair kit cost a lot of money, and tried to figure out if it had been worth it. Along the way they could have discussed the accounting fiction by which the cost of assembling the kits from bulk purchases of common tools…

If their point was to protest the poor accounting practices, calling attention to the more ridiculous consequences is a good way to do that.

Likewise, if their point was to protest potentially wasteful spending and fraud. Even if they couldn't be certain there was waste or fraud because of the lack of transparency in accounting, it's fair for them to call attention to the accounting practices by pointing out how they appear to imply waste and fraud.

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

#159

Post by dghlsakjg »

LadyCailin wrote: post #116
gretch wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more accurate analogy is that if you bought those 3 items and they did have proper itemized cost, but the whole package also had a $500 shipping charge. And then it’s not obvious how to distribute the shipping cost across each item. And in both situations it’s probably better to itemize by itself, though maybe some system didn’t allow for non tangible costs like “R&D”

If you itemize separately, then you can start to ask the important questions, like, “why is shipping $500”.

Because table saws can frequently have the same dimensions as a refrigerator.

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

#160

Post by SilverBirch »

tafda wrote: post #109

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…

There's a slight difference here. In the Hammer case what's happening is the government is negotiating the totality of a deal, so yes there are expensive hammers, but there's cheap other stuff. The hammer isn't important, the total contract is.

In the hospital case something much more nefarious is happening - the hospital negotiates discounts with the insurance companies, but in order to make money they inflate their costs in the first place so they can negotiate back down to a reasonable number with the insurance companies. Someone in an insurance company somewhere gets a good pat on the back for getting a great discount. But on the back side of this now if you don't have insurance the hospital is going to hit you with ridiculous costs forcing you to buy insurance. It's collusion between the hospital and the insurance company to screw the consumer.

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