[omegaman]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19118764

[Saquist]

I don't know how I missed this.
Here we go again.

I want everyone here to know how ridiculous this is now.
NASA has spend small fortunes on "technologies"(that's so stupid) to develop a new space shuttle replacement in the last 40 years. Each one getting CANNED for odd reasons and congress barring further development.

Many of these SSR designs are SO simple they could have been accomplished in 7 years of development or less. These pandering methods of bidding out have to stop. Dishing out more money to develop these programs is a waste of cash. Nothing should have to be developed in the way of technologies. The tech is there. Use it. Design it. Launch it.

I swear this Mode of Operation is truly designed to waste as much money as possible just to create jobs for Aerospace.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

government by it's nature is wasteful. Nasa is actually one of the better organizations within the federal government in these issues.

[horatio]

The holy mantra of libertarianism. The most funny thing is that when right-wingers say government they actually mean "any public agency accept for the military". The real issue is never markets vs. government but what the government should do. Some want it to kill, some want it to care for the young, poor, sick and old.

Ignoring right-wing ideology and getting back to reality, the efficiency of an institution has very little to do with whether it is private or public. There is no difference per se between owners-management-workers or public-management-workers incentive problems and at least in the case of big banks it is obvious that the management wastes far more resources (on themselves) than the managers of public agencies. Ironically you need precisely a strong government that enforces good corporate governance rules to undo this private waste.
Not that all this matters, ideology cares very little about facts.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

Facts? You don't present facts, you present your own opinions. In that sense, you and I are doing the exact same thing.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

And let's get something straight while we're at it, there is not one person who posts or who has ever posted on this board who talks more often in ideological terms than you. Not by a wide margin. You bring it into everything. So pointing out when some of my own opinions border on ideology when it comes from you carries little weight.

I enjoy our little debates, but let's not act you aren't in the dance.

[horatio]

You confuse analysis and ideology. If I made a case for big government that would be ideology or an opinion. But I didn't make such a case (not at least because I do not believe in it and even if I did it would equally stupid as the "government is wasteful" catchphrase), I just took your empty catchphrase and took it apart via taking a look at the actual incentive problems.

This is just basic economics, following the methods of (an admittedly party flawed) social science and thus it has nothing to do with opinions.
I'd like to add that one issue which is often overlooked is that beyond the explicit costs of doing something publicly there are implicit costs that arise because of disincentive effects of taxation. This definitely has an impact upon efficiency but of course not in the way intended by the "government is wasteful" catchphrase which rather implies, as I already pointed out above, a public control problem. Sorry to bring you the news but such incentive problems are everywhere, not just between the public and its elected representatives and public agencies.

If you see any social democratic ideology in this stupid economic analysis (Of course economics and politics are always intertwined but I try to be a good old school classical economist who separates the two as much as possible. As social democrat I might say stuff like NAFTA ruins Mexico or sweat shop suck but as economist I would say anytime that free trade is good and that the people who work at sweat shops are better off than when they worked on rice fields.) feel free to point it out. And if you can show me where the actual analytical content in the "government by its nature is wasteful" phrase lies I am all ears.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

I am certainly not confused. Your entire contribution here is opinion. You present no facts of any kind. The difference is that I admit my post is opinion, you do not.

[Captain Tom Coughlin]

Hell, it was just yesterday that you framed a discussion about the quality of Voyager as some sort of left wing Vs right wing thing. That's an example of you bringing ideology into a discussion that is within the past 24 hours. And you do that all the time.

[horatio]

Originally Posted by Captain Tom Coughlin

I am certainly not confused. Your entire contribution here is opinion. You present no facts of any kind. The difference is that I admit my post is opinion, you do not.

All I said was that the incentive problem between the public and the managers of public agencies is per se not larger or smaller than the incentive problem between the owners of a company and its managers. It all depends on transparency, i.e. how well public governance and corporate governance works.

But due to this typical knee-jerk libertarian reaction this discussion is pointless. Once you start talking about actual economics, be it externalities or incentive problems, that doesn't match Austrian "economics" they cry ideology or opinion.