Ethics of pilots fighting for the sides in WWII

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Originally Posted by swiss

That would be correct if it was so.
The products I'm talking about are standard ones you could buy everywhere.
standard(!) toilet seat, or even a normal ($40!) 500gr hammer.

I don't know how the Swiss do it, but a government spec on something as simple as a switch or a desk can take up several pages. And in most instances, a contractor must charge the government less than its' largest commercial clients. When I sell to the government, I am usually making 10% gross profit, about half what I make off of any commercial entity.

Many times when you see these inflated prices the government pays, they were part of a package deal. Example: a contractor is tasked with keeping a machine running. The machine has 1,000 parts. The contractor bids $100,000 for the job. So each part costs $100 on average and that's what the government pays per part. Now, the part may actually cost $3,000 or it might cost $5 individually to the contractor, but the government is billed at the average cost of $100 per item.

The waste in government really comes from the 12 agencies that wrote the spec for each part. In each agency the spec was reviewed by dozens of people. They all have their opinions and they all write in their own little part of the spec. In the end, that little switch that cost the manufacturer $3 to make costs the government $20 to procure in quantity, more if they buy one or two.

I swear that government employees must get paid by the pound of paperwork they generate.

Oh....and once the spec is all but written, then the government does an environmental impact study on the switch lol.

No business could operate the way the government does.

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