You write newspaper articles that blame the responsible politicians. You say that their actions resulted in a lot of wasted money and talk about how they took campaign donations from interests that profit from the government being responsible for the losses instead of private industry.
Elon Musk pushed for more space contracts to go fixed-price. In both space and defense, you could research who’s responsible for moving things in the right direction and who blocked it and resulting in wasted money.
If someone at Vox would decide they want to do something good for the world they could do it.
I don’t see how this could overcome the counter-efforts of those who currently benefit from cost-plus contracts. They after all have a lot more to lose, individually, then a society of several hundred million, where the per person costs may be a couple hundred dollars total in any given year.
Getting enough votes and maintaining voting discipline to enforce any standard at all is incredibly tough in the U.S. elections systems.
If a project goes fails and you write about how John is responsible for wasting a lot of tax-payers money because John decided to to a cost-plus contract instead a fixed-price contract, it’s hard to argue that John isn’t blameworthy if you can’t say who’s supposed to get the blame.
Avoiding opportunities to get blamed is a very strong motivator for many politicians.
What it takes, is enough reform-minded journalists who are willing to consistently talk about it for 1-2 decades.
This would work if it was the only contentious topic at stake during an election. However in reality, given recent trends, there will likely be dozens of hot button topics at stake and only a few viable candidates, and virtually all other topics carry more emotional appeal, and more motivated voting blocs, then fixed-price contracting standards.
It seems exceedingly unlikely that this issue would get enough oxygen for it to be decisive in selecting any elected candidate.
You write newspaper articles that blame the responsible politicians. You say that their actions resulted in a lot of wasted money and talk about how they took campaign donations from interests that profit from the government being responsible for the losses instead of private industry.
Elon Musk pushed for more space contracts to go fixed-price. In both space and defense, you could research who’s responsible for moving things in the right direction and who blocked it and resulting in wasted money.
If someone at Vox would decide they want to do something good for the world they could do it.
I don’t see how this could overcome the counter-efforts of those who currently benefit from cost-plus contracts. They after all have a lot more to lose, individually, then a society of several hundred million, where the per person costs may be a couple hundred dollars total in any given year.
Getting enough votes and maintaining voting discipline to enforce any standard at all is incredibly tough in the U.S. elections systems.
If a project goes fails and you write about how John is responsible for wasting a lot of tax-payers money because John decided to to a cost-plus contract instead a fixed-price contract, it’s hard to argue that John isn’t blameworthy if you can’t say who’s supposed to get the blame.
Avoiding opportunities to get blamed is a very strong motivator for many politicians.
What it takes, is enough reform-minded journalists who are willing to consistently talk about it for 1-2 decades.
This would work if it was the only contentious topic at stake during an election. However in reality, given recent trends, there will likely be dozens of hot button topics at stake and only a few viable candidates, and virtually all other topics carry more emotional appeal, and more motivated voting blocs, then fixed-price contracting standards.
It seems exceedingly unlikely that this issue would get enough oxygen for it to be decisive in selecting any elected candidate.