On Contracting

Rand Simberg has discussion on some stuff that’s vital for an efficient spacefaring future. I feel those ideas of making fixed price contracts where the contractor bears all the risk are a bit oversimplified, but hold a lot of truth and usefulness. Motivation is a very important aspect of business and work, that I have witnessed myself very closely.

This is the kind of stuff that never makes any headlines or thinking in Europe. I’m very saddened by the fact. People feel so very sheepish about the politics and the military industrial complex and never talk about it. Be it the notorious Galileo satellite positioning system or any other big government-industry partnership that is ridden with problems and involves huge amounts of money. Small innovative companies get swallowed by huge ones and no-one even notices. Is that really good for European competitiveness? If we lack the skill of introspection and self criticism in business and government and EU contracting practices, can we expect to be efficient? Hell no. We must not be blind to our internal problems. Many fields have consolidated very far where a few big companies control their fields.

Journalism has a huge gap here. We need engineers and businessmen, people with a clue about the actual substance, writing on what really happens to those billions of euros of money that the taxpayers keep paying to their governments and to the EU. This is not some childish anti-EU rant. What we need is substantive criticism. Stuff that really increases knowledge and understanding and enables, even demands improvement.

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1 Response to On Contracting

  1. Habitat Hermit says:

    I agree but I don’t think it will work, look at what has been going on with what the so-called “EU constitution”. It’s all like throwing rocks at a tsunami: one might think it worked since the waters are retreating but just wait…

    The only way it will truly work is if the EU is accountable to the citizens and most of it simply isn’t –politicians being accountable to politicians is worthless against organized camaraderie.

    I doubt things will change because besides the very big central flaw the EU is a very clever piece of work.

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