Government Waste

[The Fascist American Empire]

Anybody remember that $2 billion pen designed to write in space? I do. You know what the Russians were doing at the time? Writing in pencil.

[Lunas Legion]

That's not that bad. My local government spent £21 million on turning a perfectly good roundabout into traffic lights with massive pavements to make it 'more cyclist friendly'.

[The Fascist American Empire]

That's not that bad. My local government spent £21 million on turning a perfectly good roundabout into traffic lights with massive pavements to make it 'more cyclist friendly'.

Well then. But still, both were boneheaded decisions.

[Sociobiology]

Anybody remember that $2 billion pen designed to write in space? I do. You know what the Russians were doing at the time? Writing in pencil.

the one that is an urban legend and never actually happened?

[Sociobiology]

All governments are inherently wasteful.

But in New Jersey, the roads probably take the cake. Even with tolls the government can't maintain them.

NJ roads are actually in really good shape considering the traffic they handle, they get used more than any other roads.

[Dragoria]

Anybody remember that $2 billion pen designed to write in space? I do. You know what the Russians were doing at the time? Writing in pencil.

the one that is an urban legend and never actually happened?

It happened. Then the Russians bought pens from us because graphite conducts electricity so if the dust from writing gets into the very sensitive spaceship electronics you're in trouble.

[Uelvan]

the one that is an urban legend and never actually happened?

It happened. Then the Russians bought pens from us because graphite conducts electricity so if the dust from writing gets into the very sensitive spaceship electronics you're in trouble.

http://history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html

Not exactly billions of dollars, so that part is the urban legend.

[Vitaphone Racing]

the one that is an urban legend and never actually happened?

It happened. Then the Russians bought pens from us because graphite conducts electricity so if the dust from writing gets into the very sensitive spaceship electronics you're in trouble.

But it didn't cost billions of dollars nor did the government spend anything developing it. The more you know...

[Demonic Dachshunds]

The government itself seems to be a waste.

[Sociobiology]

Shopping is the process by which consumers use their time/money to communicate their preferences and circumstances. If you eliminate shopping then you eliminate this vetting process. If you eliminate the vetting process then you must have sublime faith in the people steering the boat. Except, if it was good intentions that could keep the boat from steering off course then some command economies would have thrived. But it's not about good intentions...it's about accurate information. And there won't be accurate information without shopping.

The efficient allocation of resources depends on accurate information. Whether you should touch, or avoid, poison oak, requires accurate information. Whether you should move to Mexico or New Zealand requires accurate information. Whether you should become a vegetarian requires accurate information. The less accurate information you have...the greater the chances that you will inefficiently allocate your resources.

Markets work because we're all free to use our time/money to provide each other with accurate information. If something matches our preferences, we buy it. If it doesn't, we don't. This helps ensure that resources are put to their most valuable uses. If you eliminate our freedom to allocate our resources according to the information we have...then all that information will not be used. If all our information isn't used then resources will not be put to their most valuable uses.

I'm really not making this up. If you study public finance you'll learn that...

A. voting does not allow us to accurately communicate our preferences/circumstances
B. therefore, congresspeople cannot supply optimal levels of public goods

Do you need me to substantiate either of those two claims? Because I certainly can. Can you substantiate your claim that congresspeople can supply optimal levels of public goods? Of course you can't. You can't substantiate your claim because the "optimal level" of anything depends on a guideline...and in economics that guideline is demand. The optimal levels of public goods will be the levels that match the demand for public goods. Which is exactly why we need to create a market in the public sector. Free-riding is irrelevant because I'm not arguing that taxation should be optional. And if your coordination concerns were legitimate then this forum wouldn't be able to function.

the invisible hand does not work for anything for which demand is static and unaffected or weakly effected by cost. things like healthcare and defense. because cost can and will rise nigh-indefinitely without impacting demand, and even profit, but will result in poor service.
For vital services change in cost will not alter demand.

It does not work if the market in question has severe barriers to entry or severe barriers to free competition such as roads or defense or bridges, because competition cannot exist without top down regulation to provide alternatives or simply cannot exist at all.

If the product is probabilistic in nature, as is the case in many forms of long term research, the market will not optimize.

Lastly It does not work in any situation where demand is relative to demand, that is demand is controlled not by supply but by how much I have relative to others. (literally I want more than others but do not care about absolute amount.) Which produces again a never ending spiral of cost without affecting demand.

the Invisible hand requires certain assumptions about the market in question, If these are violated (such as is the case in most services people prefer governments to handle) then the invisible hand will not optimize cost, supply, quality, or demand.

voting provided better communication of preferences for these things than any other method ever implemented, including market forces. Your mistake is assuming because voting is not perfect, a less perfect method is better. It is called the perfect solution fallacy.

In closing you are also confusing true demand for market demand. Market demand is not the number of people who want a service or good nor is it the number of people who NEED a good or service. If either of these are what you need market demand may well preform worse than voting.

[The Nuclear Fist]

Anybody remember that $2 billion pen designed to write in space? I do. You know what the Russians were doing at the time? Writing in pencil.

That story is actually inaccurate. The pen didn't cost anywhere near that much, and it made writing in space much easier. The pen itself worked so well that the Soviets ended up using an exact copy.

Do you know why you can't use a pencil in space? Debris. Lots of little debris floating all around in zero gravity means they're bound to get into the delicate machinery. And what does that mean? Accidents, potentially even dead astronauts.

[The Nuclear Fist]

The government itself seems to be a waste.

Only if you really don't know anything at all, I'd imagine.

Not that I'm implying anything.

[Demonic Dachshunds]

The government itself seems to be a waste.

Only if you really don't know anything at all, I'd imagine.

Not that I'm implying anything.

I'm not attacking the notion of government, but rather American politicts and waste.

[Lemanrussland]

Anybody remember that $2 billion pen designed to write in space? I do. You know what the Russians were doing at the time? Writing in pencil.

As stated before, a bit of an urban myth. Waste at NASA is a really big problem, though. Lots of what goes on there is for political reasons, really. Having 10 field centers scattered across the nation earns you a lot of happy Congressmen who like the money you bring into their districts, but is not really efficient.

I think the "spend it now or lose it" effect that comes with year-by-year funding also causes a lot of waste there. We should really go to the system the ESA has, with project pre-funding. That is really a problem throughout the American government though, federal spending spikes like crazy at the end of every year, for essentially political reasons.

Not all government is inefficient. Medicare apparently has less than 3 percent overhead, which is quite excellent, even by private sector standards. The USPS (the postal service itself, not the unsustainable pension system forced on it by Congress) is also remarkably efficient.

[The Laissez-Fairy]

The tunnel project in Boston deserves a big wasteful medal. They spent nine years planning it and budgetted $2.9 billion for two tunnels, a bridge and a park. It was finished in 2007, nine years late. It cost $14 billion: almost three times budget when accounting for inflation.

[Neutraligon]

The tunnel project in Boston deserves a big wasteful medal. They spent nine years planning it and budgetted $2.9 billion for two tunnels, a bridge and a park. It was finished in 2007, nine years late. It cost $14 billion: almost three times budget when accounting for inflation.

The idea of the tunnel itself is not a waste. Also, the building of the tunnel was incredibly difficult considering the soil conditions, the underground pipes and electrical stuff, the fact that they were building the tunnel right under an existing bridge, meaning they had to avoid any harm to the soil, or the bridge itself would get structural problems, etc. The problem was not only did they under budget, but also the people building the bridge did a crappy job of building it.

[Kilobugya]

Stupid things like that happen everywhere - governments have no monopolies on that. The private companies do a lot of similar silly things. Bad management exists everywhere, and I can't count the number of times I (as a professional programmer) wrote code for a (private) customer and then he changed his mind and made me throw half of it away, in a way as silly as that example. It happens at small and big scales, in small and big companies, public and private.

[Parhe]

Stupid things like that happen everywhere - governments have no monopolies on that. The private companies do a lot of similar silly things. Bad management exists everywhere, and I can't count the number of times I (as a professional programmer) wrote code for a (private) customer and then he changed his mind and made me throw half of it away, in a way as silly as that example. It happens at small and big scales, in small and big companies, public and private.

How do programmers get paid for specific codes? I imagine a per hour thing would prevent that but at the same time, if most people ask to be paid for a code itself and is cheaper, may result in less revenue.

[Kilobugya]

Stupid things like that happen everywhere - governments have no monopolies on that. The private companies do a lot of similar silly things. Bad management exists everywhere, and I can't count the number of times I (as a professional programmer) wrote code for a (private) customer and then he changed his mind and made me throw half of it away, in a way as silly as that example. It happens at small and big scales, in small and big companies, public and private.

How do programmers get paid for specific codes? I imagine a per hour thing would prevent that but at the same time, if most people ask to be paid for a code itself and is cheaper, may result in less revenue.

I work at a Free Software service provider, basically we code addons/customization/... for corporation having special needs. Depending on the deal, it's either a fixed amount of money for a fixed set of features (but then, if they change the set of features, we renegotiate the amount of money, and if they give up things we already did, we still bill them for that), or they ask things whenever they need them and at the end of the month (or quarter) we bill them depending how many hours/days we worked for them that month.

[Post-Keynesian Economics]

In my opinion, the worst examples of government waste pretty much have to be by the state and local governments, because they have a limited amount of cash just like private citizens.

The only way that the national government (at least America) can waste money is by either putting money somewhere it will never move (in the bank account of Old Man Jenkins who is already a billionaire and doesn't operate a business anymore) or by spending it straight into the foreign sector with nonsensical foreign aid.

[Mkuki]

Well, I was just gonna post this picture in the the eternal thread with a short explanation, but since that's gone I guess I need a thread for it.

What's the absolute worst example of your government wasting money that you have heard of? Including local governments, and how would you stop this happening in future.

(Image)

This safety railing was installed recently by the local county government. It's currently the source of many lulz on my towns political facebook page.

Maybe we wouldn't need to cut so many benefits if these people weren't so insanely incompetent and wasting money.

Maybe its modern art?

What's the absolute worst example of your government wasting money that you have heard of?

War on Drugs, maybe?

[Ostroeuropa]

In my opinion, the worst examples of government waste pretty much have to be by the state and local governments, because they have a limited amount of cash just like private citizens.

The only way that the national government (at least America) can waste money is by either putting money somewhere it will never move (in the bank account of Old Man Jenkins who is already a billionaire and doesn't operate a business anymore) or by spending it straight into the foreign sector with nonsensical foreign aid.

What do you think of the Marshall plan. Was that nonsensical foreign aid?

[Sociobiology]

the one that is an urban legend and never actually happened?

It happened. Then the Russians bought pens from us because graphite conducts electricity so if the dust from writing gets into the very sensitive spaceship electronics you're in trouble.

"space" pens const the government about 3 dollars a pen
and both the US and the Russians used pencils but the graphite dust was a fire hazard in a zero G pressurized environment.
The super expensive space pen was developed by a private individual for millions of his own money, to write underwater, on his own initiative with no help or agreement with NASA, he did eventually sell them to NASA at 3 dollars a pen.
hence it being an urban legend.