EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
General => General Technical Chat => Topic started by: EEVblog on January 15, 2020, 10:16:30 am
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The scary/sad part about this is that the former Deputy Administrator at NASA agrees with this:
https://qz.com/1784335/the-space-military-industrial-complex-profits-off-us-failure/
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But what does all this have to do with the US’s lag in the manned and womanned space race?
The disease has spread like a plague...
The best way to make a profit as an aerospace company is to fail
That's true for everything in the public sector. For example, the FAA and the 737 MAX issues, the next thing they're going to say is that to do their job properly they'd need more $.
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Capitalism, at it's peak ... nothing wrong with that, as its at the land where it was born and still being trusted as the country's foundation.
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Capitalism, at it's peak ... nothing wrong with that, as its at the land where it was born and still being trusted as the country's foundation.
Is it true capitalism when you've taken the money out of the people's pockets by force? Last time I checked, you couldn't go to jail for not buying an iPhone => Apple is true capitalism. But these fake "private" businesses aren't.
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Capitalism, at it's peak ... nothing wrong with that, as its at the land where it was born and still being trusted as the country's foundation.
Is it true capitalism when you've taken the money out of the people's pockets by force? Last time I checked, you couldn't go to jail for not buying an iPhone => Apple is true capitalism. But these fake "private" businesses aren't.
What people money ? Its capitalism in a sense that is done by gov. officials on gov money. >:D
Geez ... "people money" .. that sounds so socialism.
Please don't be naive, that those officials were humbly keep quite and shut up their mouths for decades, unless they are fully choked by "capital" in their mouth, there you go, hope you get it. ;)
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Capitalism, at it's peak ... nothing wrong with that, as its at the land where it was born and still being trusted as the country's foundation.
Is it true capitalism when you've taken the money out of the people's pockets by force? Last time I checked, you couldn't go to jail for not buying an iPhone => Apple is true capitalism. But these fake "private" businesses aren't.
There is no such thing as true capitalism. These private businesses are exploiting a resource, equivalent to digging up an ore, refining it and selling it. In this case the resource they are mining is public funds. They are doing exactly what they are supposed to.
And if any entity like a regulator places restrictions on your profit making activities, you seek ways to undermine them, with fake research, puppet organizations, dirty tricks, paid lobbyists, donations to politicians, writing draft bills for them to sign...
I was recently reading how wealthy landowners literally instituted their own theory of economics into academia in order to counter a very popular idea that a land tax was the only fair tax required. They basically financed new universities, selecting the presidents, and told them what economic theories they should teach. So now this form of economics is the "truth", and it says taxing wealth is bad for the economy... perfect. :-+
Huge multinational companies have perfected the art of all these techniques. They now run the world, there is not really anything you can do about it.
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It is not a problem of "capitalism". It is the problem of corrupt and/or dumb governmental/public officials (you elect and pay from your taxes) who do the businesses with private companies. Private companies do their job - they maximize their revenues and profits as the market (ie. a dumb government/public body) allows it.
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It is not a problem of "capitalism". It is the problem of corrupt and/or dumb governmental/public officials (you elect and pay from your taxes) who do the businesses with private companies. Private companies do their job - they maximize their revenues and profits as the market (ie. a dumb government/public body) allows it.
I think you missed the point. Even starting with a completely honest and smart government, private companies will seek to subvert that government and put in place corrupt/dumb officials who are malleable. The private companies will donate millions of dollars into financing propaganda campaigns so that the electorate thinks that those dumb/corrupt candidates are actually the ones who should be in power and that the honest/smart ones would be really bad for the economy/country/etc.
So the fact we have dumb/corrupt officials is not because they happened to be the ones standing, and somehow the electorate made a mistake electing them. Private companies corrupt the whole of the political process, to the point where everyone thinks electing the dumb/corrupt officials is the right decision.
You can always argue whether the murderer is to blame or someone else for not preventing them murdering. People love to try to pin the "moral blame" on one thing, but really it's a system problem. Private companies will try to corrupt governance, that is what they do.
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It's always worth quoting this when something like this comes up:
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
And if you note one of the other parts of that speech, the part that doesn't get quoted as often, you realise that America wasn't always a selfish kakistocracy.:
As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage.
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The scary/sad part about this is that the former Deputy Administrator at NASA agrees with this:
https://qz.com/1784335/the-space-military-industrial-complex-profits-off-us-failure/
The whole lengthy article, can be summarized in just few words below ...
"A rampant and seriously acute corruptions and briberies that survived and untouched for decades in US government agencies and the US people representatives included."
As simple as that, no much different that those petty corruption at under developed/developing countries.
Too bad there is no independent and powerful Anti-Graft body there like other countries have.
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Capitalism, at it's peak ... nothing wrong with that, as its at the land where it was born and still being trusted as the country's foundation.
That betrays a distinct lack of historical knowledge about both the foundations of Capitalism and America. The "Father of Capitalism" Adam Smith was a Scotsman. America was first founded a century before Smith was born by Puritans seeking "freedom from religious persecution"/"the freedom to indulge in religious persecution"*. America may have enthusiastically adopted Capitalism, but it did so quite a bit later than its foundation.
* Delete according to your own religious and political biases.
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I think you missed the point. Even starting with a completely honest and smart government, private companies will seek to subvert that government and put in place corrupt/dumb officials who are malleable.
Sure, that is the job of the private companies - to maximize their revenues and profits (btw required by law in most countries), and therefore they seek any channels how to do it best. If a private manufacturer is able to replace (for example) the managers of public "National Happy Space Organization" by a dumb/corrupt idiots, it is not a problem of the private manufacturer (in opposite - it is considered a great success in the private company).
EDIT: "How to replace somebody who is important at the customer side and who is not enough positive" is a pretty usual and standard bullet point in C-level agendas in most private companies and corporations.
I still do not understand why people complain when private companies are milking governmental/public money. People should complain and investigate why the governmental/public officials purchasing the goods and services from those private companies allow that..
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Is it true capitalism when you've taken the money out of the people's pockets by force? Last time I checked, you couldn't go to jail for not buying an iPhone => Apple is true capitalism. But these fake "private" businesses aren't.
Meh, just wait a few years until you can't buy anything or file taxes without either an iPhone or Android :P But at least you will have a choice ;D
Sure, that is the job of the private companies - to maximize their revenues and profits (btw required by law in most countries), and therefore they seek any channels how to do it best. If a private manufacturer is able to replace (for example) the managers of public "National Happy Space Organization" by a dumb/corrupt idiots, it is not a problem of the private manufacturer (in opposite - it is considered a great success in the private company).
No, that shouldn't be the job of private companies in any sensible universe.
Corruption also isn't tolerated in civilized society, or you end up playing whack-a-mole with no way to win.
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People should complain and investigate why the governmental/public officials purchasing the goods and services from those private companies allow that..
I think people do complain and seek change. The problem is by the time that the public notice it the "regulatory capture" (as we call it here in Britain) or "revolving doors" (as they call it in the US) has placed people favourable to the status quo into the very governmental positions that would have to enact change to answer those complaints. Hence to get actual change at that point you need little short of a political revolution.
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You no longer hear enough people quote a key rule of engineering organisations which you used to see everywhere. The Law of Failure - "Innovative organizations abhor little failures, but reward big ones" most often stated as "The failure to fail fully is a fool's folly."
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I erased a long polemic, but the blame lies as much with NASA and its bureaucracy as it does with industry. And with the political system employing them. No player in this game can get away just pointing fingers at the others.
In one sense all of us in the US are to blame because we elected the ones running this show.
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In one sense all of us in the US any western 'democracy' are to blame because we elected the ones running this show.
There fixed that for ya!
We in the 'West' seem at the moment to have some of the most useless, conniving, self-interested, <long list of adverse character traits deleted>, politicians and leaders that have existed in modern times. Although the US electorate deservedly come in for a lot of flak on this front I think it's unfair for them to get singled out, even if it is by one of their own citizens. We've all elected a lot of people who shouldn't be put in charge of <choose your own metaphor> and even some who can't be trusted to tie their own shoelaces or tuck their own shirts in.
Imagine how far we would have come with space exploration/exploitation if we'd all cooperated for the last 50 years rather than sought out every last vestige of military advantage that can be derived from space technology. Europe, in the form of the ESA, did better than most, but they still had to fight for every penny of their budgets and have their own problems with bureaucracy, but because the individual national contributions to ESA were relatively small they got a lot further than any single European nation could have dreamt of doing.
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We've all elected a lot of people who shouldn't be put in charge of <choose your own metaphor> and even some who can't be trusted to tie their own shoelaces or tuck their own shirts in.
We can't not elect them, therefore they always "win" no matter what, and there's no way to fire them for good.
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We can't not elect them, therefore they always "win" no matter what,
Old hippy saying: "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the Government always gets in".
and there's no way to fire them for good.
A trebuchet?
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Old Greek saying: democracy is a rule of hyenas over donkeys ;)
A big problem is that actually intelligent and honest people have little to gain from doing politics so the offices fill up with, well, various less than intelligent and less than honest, individuals. Voting is rather meaningless in such circumstances.
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It's a good thread because something has to change before Brazil (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/) becomes reality.
Engineering has climaxed decades ago, when engineering-centric companies that put man on the moon and fathered many technologies, were respected and used their values of safety, quality, reliability to make projects... successful.
Now, profit is the number one goal of corporations. Bean counters have taken over, cut spending, layoff engineers, hire low paid noobs, outsourcing it etc.
Engineers are now pushed and rushed, as they are the bottleneck to profit. Safety and regulatory is to be circumvented. R&D is frowned upon because it does not earn money in the financials. Flog fewer engineers into working as hard as many, and starve them of needed support to get the work done.
Or even sabotage the engineering team's work- to keep the contract going, to keep milking the cash cow. That took me a long time to understand - that project failure is actually success - management needs to keep the money flow going and profits up.
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Voting is rather meaningless in such circumstances.
You nailed it.
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A colleague of mine once worked as a contractor for a GEC (UK) defense company on a small project that had been going on for some years. He said it was one of his most depressing contracts - something that should have taken a few months for one or two people.
The issue was that it was a cost+ development for the MOD (Ministry of Defence). Every month, military brass would arrive at around 11am and then disappear with senior managers to the local country club for a 'progress meeting' over a fine lunch till about 3pm. I guess there wasn't much progress to talk about as very little was actually achieved each month, no doubt down to many from a very long list of 'plausible' excuses.
Margaret Thatcher became prime minister at the time and one of her moves was to apply pressure to squeeze/eliminate the notoriously inefficient cost+ defence contracts, so the MOD duly converted this particular development to a fixed cost one. This lasted until the MOD called to arrange the next monthly 'progress meeting' only to be told that there was no time or money in the fixed price development budget for such meetings. The contract went back to cost+ quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.
I'm in doubt that this was absolutely typical for a great deal of military projects in the 70's and 80's. Hopefully things are better these days but I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't.
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Voting is rather meaningless in such circumstances.
You nailed it.
You're expecting the political system to fix this? Politics is stuck in failure oscillating between right and left, conservative/labour parties etc.
People are perpetually unhappy with the leadership and vote in the other direction every election.
As they say on Wall Street, "greed is good, greed is legal". It's a fundamental change to Capitalism that is needed I guess. Otherwise NASA will still have the knife in their back.
Capitalism needs to adapt because china's nationalism will unite and drive them to do very well. They already are beating the West because they have a long-term plan for growth- which we will never have with an oscillating political system.
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A colleague of mine once worked as a contractor for a GEC (UK) defense company on a small project that had been going on for some years. He said it was one of his most depressing contracts - something that should have taken a few months for one or two people.
The issue was that it was a cost+ development for the MOD (Ministry of Defence). Every month, military brass would arrive at around 11am and then disappear with senior managers to the local country club for a 'progress meeting' over a fine lunch till about 3pm. I guess there wasn't much progress to talk about as very little was actually achieved each month, no doubt down to many from a very long list of 'plausible' excuses.
Margaret Thatcher became prime minister at the time and one of her moves was to apply pressure to squeeze/eliminate the notoriously inefficient cost+ defence contracts, so the MOD duly converted this particular development to a fixed cost one. This lasted until the MOD called to arrange the next monthly 'progress meeting' only to be told that there was no time or money in the fixed price development budget for such meetings. The contract went back to cost+ quicker than you can say Jack Frost.
I'm in doubt that this was absolutely typical for a great deal of military projects in the 70's and 80's. Hopefully things are better these days but I wouldn't be surprised if they weren't.
Fixed price contracts are no great obstacle in the defence industry. Needs change, and if they don't change naturally you coax them into changing. Any deviation from the original fixed price contract is where you make your money.
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It's a good thread because something has to change before Brazil (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/) becomes reality.
Engineering has climaxed decades ago, when engineering-centric companies that put man on the moon and fathered many technologies, were respected and used their values of safety, quality, reliability to make projects... successful.
Now, profit is the number one goal of corporations. Bean counters have taken over, cut spending, layoff engineers, hire low paid noobs, outsourcing it etc.
Engineers are now pushed and rushed, as they are the bottleneck to profit. Safety and regulatory is to be circumvented. R&D is frowned upon because it does not earn money in the financials. Flog fewer engineers into working as hard as many, and starve them of needed support to get the work done.
Or even sabotage the engineering team's work- to keep the contract going, to keep milking the cash cow. That took me a long time to understand - that project failure is actually success - management needs to keep the money flow going and profits up.
When I said that no one is without blame, I meant no one. While profit seeking is one of the problems, engineering departments have created their own problems in addition to any outside help they may have had. When process is more important than product. When checklists replace thought. The list goes on. Dilbert is not a comic, it is a documentary.
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When checklists replace thought.
Checklists replacing thought is one of the best proven ways to improve results, whether its silly mistakes in design work, or screwups in operating theatres.
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I think we're talking about two things that seem to overlap:
1. "Bullshit jobs" where people are employed doing something useless or destined to fail. Like the endless aerospace contracts. Everybody collects a paycheque and goes along with it, it's a ride on the money train.
2. Business ethics that place profit above all else, such as safety.
Boeing ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg is sipping Mai Tai's on the beach with his $62M golden handshake, despite running a huge corporation literally into the ground, killing 346 people - all for the sake of profit.
Boeing KC-46 air refueller project is past $43B in 2015 after 4 years. That's a lot of taxpayer's money to refit a 767 (that has MCAS) - a great ride on the money train.
I see the drive to put the blame on engineers. We're bound under a Code of Ethics, to whistleblow and save the world from corruption.
We would kind of like to remain employed and not have a lawsuit against us. Those are too stressful and too expensive for anyone in the trenches to afford.
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When checklists replace thought.
Checklists replacing thought is one of the best proven ways to improve results, whether its silly mistakes in design work, or screwups in operating theatres.
Checklists are great for long repetitive operations. But a checklist to design a new system. When you are designing your common emitter amplifier in 1957, what do you say in the box that asks how you treated filament to cathode isolation?