…or how Dilbert won the war. Though actually, credit has to go to the pointy-haired boss.
I think this also explains a lot about why we haven’t made much progress in space.
15 thoughts on “Bureaucratic Sabotage”
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…or how Dilbert won the war. Though actually, credit has to go to the pointy-haired boss.
I think this also explains a lot about why we haven’t made much progress in space.
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I said it years ago while working at the Lazy-L; “Sabotage is indistinguishable from normal engineering practice.”
It also reminds me of (J. Porter) Clark’s Law: any sufficiently advanced cluelessness is indistinguishable from malice.
A company I worked for in Tucson many years ago had what they called the Kung Fu file. It was started because a weekly engineering meeting that included many of the techs and run by the plant manager was a very serious affair that got nothing accomplished. What the Kung Fu file was, was a collection of artwork and quotes passed under the table during the meeting to try and make someone bust up during the meeting. It was top secret and only the techs knew about the existence of the file. The first paper in the file was a picture of the plant manager getting kicked in the head while chairing the meeting.
One paper had a list of quotes from a particular engineer that never made any sense, but sounded like they almost did. It went on for many pages and included years of quotes.
“I think this also explains a lot about why we haven’t made much progress in space.”
What’s to keep “commercial” space from becoming every bit as bureaucratized? It seems to be a typical human response to risk.
In the private sector, this compulsion is mitigated by the necessity to produce value in the end.
Welcome to Lockmart, AKA the Lazy-L ranch
Eliminate the cost-plus contracts and I’ll bet you’ll have a lot less of that unproductive activity at Lock-Mart. When you’re going to get paid no matter how inefficient you operate, there is no incentive to be efficient.
The percentage of overhead consumed by corporate bureaucracy seems to increase exponentially with company size. That’s one reason why smaller companies tend to be more agile and productive.
What’s to keep “commercial” space from becoming every bit as bureaucratized?
Only one thing… competition. Free market survival of the fittest.
This sounds apocryphal to me, but it would be oh-so-sweet if it were true. Of course, I could take the global warming approach of assuming that it’s true because it ought to be…
Only one thing… competition. Free market survival of the fittest.
It only really works when you can keep a sizable field in play. IMNSHO, the second any field has fewer than ten serious competitors is when everyone involved should be kept under antitrust scrutiny. No mergers, no tax breaks that help Behemoth Inc. more than Joe’s Rocket Club, audits, etc. Stop letting companies steamroll into ‘Too Big To Fail.’ If they do it on their own merits, fine. But bailouts come with a decapitation and forcible split.
IMNSHO, the second any field has fewer than ten serious competitors is when everyone involved should be kept under antitrust scrutiny. No mergers
That implies faith in the wisdom and benevolence of government bureaucrats. You do realize that most of the mergers in the aerospace industry were actually orchestrated by the “antitrust scrutinizers,” don’t you?
Titus saith:
“In the private sector, this compulsion is mitigated by the necessity to produce value in the end.”
Which is exactly why the aerospace industry has remained competitive and nimble over the past 100 years, right?
Oh, wait… Never mind.
The aerospace industry was quite nimble for most of its history. Look at aircraft development during the 1930s through the 1960s as an example. Likewise, things were pretty nimble with rocket development in the 1950s and 60s.
Things really started to bog down following the end of the Cold War when so many of the legacy aerospace companies merged or went out of business.
So what has been NASA’s excuse for the last 30+ years?
It only really works when you can keep a sizable field in play.
Which is why you need low entry barriers. While they are high. They are not too high, if, ok big IF, enough destinations are created to have more need than the current batch of companies can fill.
Even Elon talks about the need for “…new entrants in space launch” and encouragement of liability limitations.
Yes, I regard the current antitrust approach as supine. Part of the problem is that it is intended and discussed as focused on monopoly issues. I think we start having problems well before we get to the state of caring if the last two plane manufacturers merge.
Economies of scale are strong, and the leveraged use of the big-corp-stick is also quite fierce. So stop aiming tax rates at relative levels of profit and scale them primarily on the competitiveness of your field instead.