Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#111

Post by patricius » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

astura wrote: post #106

patricius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. most major advancements in tech and healthcare are due to the military. Can you back that up? That military spending has been high gives no guarantee that having spent the same money in the private sector wouldn't have led to even better results and advancements.

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ The military spends on R&D where it makes zero business sense for a for-profit company to spend. Private companies must be profitable.

Still, the question remains: Can we say a priori that the funds for R&D military spending wouldn't have been spent better by the private sector?

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#112

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:26 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #102

whatshisface wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative would be a country full of people so similar to you that the average person would feel like their countrymen might as well be them. If the entire US was 100% aligned with your own politics then taxes wouldn't be very burdensome. If my political faction ran the country like a dictatorship, I wouldn't mind them taking my money, because they'd spend it on getting me what I want (which may include "a bette…

> "An alternative would be a country full of people so similar to you that the average person would feel like their countrymen might as well be them." What? If people really felt that way there would be no need for taxes. If you have a lack of self-interest (or the sense of "self" is altered to refer to the group) you would freely give money to each other. The only time taxes are required is when people will not free…

[deleted]

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#113

Post by dasil003 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

nonbel wrote: post #93

kaitai wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very elegant, and encapsulates the problem with America. Well, many other countries as well, but certainly us, America. Not government -- but our conception of "ourselves". HN occasionally has articles about education and the comparison of, say, Finnish education and American education comes up. I am firmly of the opinions that Finnish education works, when it works, because it is a service that the populatio…

>"The sense that government takes our money and gives it to someone else" If something else was going on, then taxes would be voluntary...

Whooooooosh!!

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#114

Post by tboyd47 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

gtCameron wrote: post #81

tboyd47 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would private charities be any less corrupt than public ones?

Because private charities rely on someone making an affirmative choice to give them money. In theory, if they are corrupt or incompetent enough the flow of money dries up. If the government is corrupt or incompetent, people get angry at them and then ... nothing changes. The flow of money isn't stopping, in fact the most likely outcome is their budgets keep going up year after year.

But then you have to accept a situation where only the people who have money (or those on their payroll) can implement policy. You might improve the efficiency that way but it doesn't sound much better to me, especially in communities with a history of discrimination.

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#115

Post by jermaustin1 » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

Uehreka wrote: post #95

jermaustin1 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you work for the Boy Scouts? I am not going to spend in excess, but if a company is paying for me to fly somewhere, I doubt a $30 airport meal is going to break them. Now there have been times on site with a client, and I had a $120 per diem, where I might eat breakfast and lunch from a vending machine so that I can have a nice dinner, but I would never skip a meal at an airport if I had enough money left for it,…

I'd argue there's a big difference between my company paying for dinner and a friend or family member taking me out to dinner. In the latter case I'm definitely not going to run up a huge bill. Looking back to the quote, I suppose the definition of "someone else" can mean a lot.

I wish I had more friends like you, then ;)

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#116

Post by Nasrudith » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:27 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #77

hopefulengineer wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. US military is only 16-18% of federal spending. Entitlements like social security, medicaid, and welfare make up 65-70% of federal spending. The majority of military spending is on salaries and benefits anyway, it's essentially a welfare program itself >delivers the least 2. most major advancements in tech and healthcare are due to the military. Silicon Valley was built on military spending. Self driving cars were…

From an economics point of view, an unnecessary job is inefficient not because it gives people money (they can spend it efficiently on themselves), but because it wastes people's time when they could be doing something else. (Not to mention other wasted resources.) Social security is efficient because it doesn't have this problem.

There are two sorts of efficiency percentage and wisdom - one can heat their house at greater than 100% efficiency by burning money and priceless.

However you really shouldn't be using them that way since there are far better uses for the value.

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#117

Post by crispyambulance » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:28 PM UTC

j_m_b wrote: post #8

“There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can…

I don't know how much Milton Friedman applies here. It's not like the government is being wantonly careless. They are investigating, after all. This is partly a consequence of the bidding process and the push to keep costs as low as possible-- there could also be a bit of crony-ism here.

These kinds of stories usually start out with some bidders putting together a killer power point deck and making a pitch, just like that LLC of TWO people that won that disastrous contract to rebuild Puerto Rico's power grid, or those guys that the movie "War Dogs" is about.

Sometimes they're upstanding folks who do a good job, sometimes they're fraudsters, sometimes they mean well but just can't deliver, sometimes they deliver but with comical cost overruns (name your favorite defense contractor).

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#118

Post by astura » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #39

jki275 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Military in the US is 18% of the budget. SS and medicare are something like 70%. If you want to live in a country without a military there are a bunch of them. I wouldn't personally want to live in any of them, but of course everyone is free to do as they see fit.

Iceland has no military spending Ireland spends 0.4% of it's GDP on military Switzerland 0.7% Sweden 1% Finland (who have actually been invaded in living memory) 1.4% The U.S. spent $574b on defence and $79b on veterans last year, both increased way above inflation - total of $57b. Education by comparision dropped by 14%, or $9b. Health by 18% or $15b. The largest slice of the U.S. budget is healthcare (mainly medica…

That's an incredibly naïve view of military spending since those countries are subsided by the American military.

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#119

Post by danny_taco » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

sakarisson wrote: post #3

Accenture. Why am I not surprised?

This is par for the course for Accenture. I joined Accenture to work on a very interesting development project for a fortune 10 a few years ago. A project that could have been done in 6-8 months by a competent team in a reasonable budget. But being Accenture, it turned into a mess of epic proportions with the client threatening to sue.

In the end we ended up delivering this piece of software that I wouldn't touch again with a 10-foot pole, which didn't even satisfy most of the original business requirements. The exec from the client that hired us changed the narrative to his stakeholders to make this appear as a big success, and the project even got a lot of coverage on the internal newsletter when in reality it was just a smash and grab of a dozen or so million dollars from a client that got swindled so bad that they wouldn't even admit it.

I ended up being mostly on the bench for the rest of my stay at Accenture while watching every single one of the individuals that worked on that project leave for better pastures. A year in after the project started no one that worked on it was in Accenture anymore, except me. I was conflicted if I wanted to leave because I would hit the gym for two hours every day at around 2-3pm, then go home. My mornings were full of reading blogs, working on personal projects and just gossiping by the water cooler. In the end I decided to leave since I missed doing real work and working with a competent team. That year was one hell of a ride for me.

Re: Government Hired a Firm for $13.6M to Hire Recruits. It Hired 2

#120

Post by saas_sam » Fri, Dec 14, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

crispyambulance wrote: post #117

j_m_b wrote: post #8

“There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can…

I don't know how much Milton Friedman applies here. It's not like the government is being wantonly careless. They are investigating, after all. This is partly a consequence of the bidding process and the push to keep costs as low as possible-- there could also be a bit of crony-ism here. These kinds of stories usually start out with some bidders putting together a killer power point deck and making a pitch, just like…

> It's not like the government is being wantonly careless. They are investigating, after all.

So, if someone does something seemingly egregiously careless, but they investigate after being found out, that nullifies the carelessness, in your mind?

I think we may agree to disagree on that point.