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Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#121

Post by Mvandenbergh »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #93
jacques_chester wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One main difference is that public companies are required by law to have independent auditors. Government departments are not. In Australia independent audits rely on the Australian National Audit Office, which is profoundly and deliberately underfunded because of its annoying habit of discovering embarrassing incompetence and wastefulness.

That's not actually as important as the key main difference. Governments spend YOUR money, companies spend their own money. On top of that, companies are subject to competition and, as cynwoody pointed out, they can go out of business. This means that the incentives for reducing fraud are greater in private business and companies that have high levels of fraud that are easily reigned in by obvious solutions will be a…

Companies are not natural persons any more than governments are, they don't have their own money. The difference is that shareholders are better at demanding independent audits than voters are.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#122

Post by InclinedPlane »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #121
InclinedPlane wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually as important as the key main difference. Governments spend YOUR money, companies spend their own money. On top of that, companies are subject to competition and, as cynwoody pointed out, they can go out of business. This means that the incentives for reducing fraud are greater in private business and companies that have high levels of fraud that are easily reigned in by obvious solutions will be a…

Companies are not natural persons any more than governments are, they don't have their own money. The difference is that shareholders are better at demanding independent audits than voters are.

The government takes money from people involuntarily, corporations receive money due to voluntary transactions.

If I never buy a product from Apple or Exxon, there's no problem with that. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#123

Post by intended »

tdoggette wrote: post #80
scotty79 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country government officials are usually paid to be this stupid. I can't imagine USA government officials are this stupid for free. I know ... never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by stupidity, but come on! Someone sure got at least a nice car out of it.

I chuckled. It is, in fact, quite easy to imagine that American bureaucrats (as a collective) are that stupid. I'm not discounting the other possibility, though.

Whats somewhat sad though, is that for the majority of my time, America was described as the place where things "just worked".

To be fair, a lot of things do "Just work". This may just be the time Americans look to their government and decide to clean house and rehire competent people into it.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#125

Post by rlpb »

From the article:

> the legislative auditor concluded that the company "had a moral responsibility"...

Since when do corporations have any kind of responsibility, other than to make as much profit as possible? Expecting anything else is futile. If something needs to be fixed, it is in mechanisms to restrain this kind of behaviour where it is in the public interest. Demanding that corporations have morals is not the solution.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#126

Post by lifeisstillgood »

There is positive corruption and nevative corruption

Positive corruption does the right thing (build roads, install broadband into poor communities) but adds cost

Negative corruption distorts right thing so much it simply does not happen (communities never get proper triads or sewage because they are the wrong tribe)

The broadband is the thing - good. If you don't want government to overpay I suggest Cisco routers is the last thin to look at - start with military contracts

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#127

Post by koralatov »

gchpaco wrote: post #108
yogo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic comment but it seems like some kind of trend to intentionally use double negatives in comments. I understand that sometimes using the double negative could be an important distinction, e.g. "not uncommon" does not necessarily mean common, but in this case I think one has to go out of the way to say "not infrequently." Maybe it's just me but I had to re-read that sentence to be sure I understood what was sai…

Could just be regional idioms; I think I picked that phrase up from some British folks who made a habit of understatement. It isn't especially friendly to the reader, I'll admit (there, I did it again!).

The phrase ``not uncommon'' is not uncommon in the UK.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#128

Post by mich41 »

Reminds me of new EU members. Joining the EU was advertised as source of funds for development and catching-up with the West and now a benchmark of politicians' "performance" is how much funds are they able obtain for their electorate - the more is spent, the better.

In extreme cases one didn't even have to bribe officials to get bogus contracts because if the city didn't find a way to spend all the money it was offered, it would simply get less.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#129

Post by Mvandenbergh »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #122
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are not natural persons any more than governments are, they don't have their own money. The difference is that shareholders are better at demanding independent audits than voters are.

The government takes money from people involuntarily, corporations receive money due to voluntary transactions. If I never buy a product from Apple or Exxon, there's no problem with that. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail.

That's true, but it doesn't change the fact that a corporation is not spending its own money either. That money belongs to the shareholders in the same way that tax receipts belong to citizens.

Actually you would expect taxpayers to be even more vociferous in pushing audit requirements on government departments than shareholders are in ensuring their portfolio companies are correctly audited.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#130

Post by tijs »

arethuza wrote: post #106
tokenadult wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at something where you can compare prices between countries, like per-mile subway construction costs, the U.S. is a huge outlier, with procurement costs much higher than Europe. The higher-than-Europe comparison I had not heard before. The higher than private industry cost of United States government contracting (and contracting by local units of government when they spend federal funds) is dictated by th…

In case you think all European transport projects are wonderfully run: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/9345650/No-s... About £1 billion for a tram line where the end points are about 11 km apart in a city that has excellent taxi and bus services....

If the comparisons a few comment up are correct that same tram line would have cost $11 billion+ in the US though.
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