this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Have you seen the history of US military contracts? Getting paid billions to fuck it up is literally the game.
That's called corruption. You can easily write contacts that hold companies accountable. I know, I've seen and written some. You can offer incentives over a lower base pay for meeting goals. Or the possibility of repeat service contacts especially in spaces where sole source isn't the norm.
That's literally the Republican argument for outsourcing more and more stuff to contractors instead of hiring people in house. All it does is add overhead and waste money.
You hire contractors for temporary work. Because hiring government employees is a long term investment. Government employees have great job stability because they rarely downsize like industry does. I don't like it either but the other option is to have a lot of surplus labor if projects end.
The other reason is that the government just doesn't pay enough for specialists. It's a side effect of slow change due to bureaucracy which helps prevent corruption in house. Also that pay is capped at the VP level which really needs to be raised.
Almost all of these problems could be mitigated but most civil service changes require Congress. So blame them and the Republicans desire to make government workers the enemy so no one really wants to fix it.