

Governments 'too inefficient' for future Moon landings - equilibrium
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20540172

======
drostie
In my libertarian college days it seemed like bureaucracy was a horrible waste
of resources, but the more and more I think about it, the more and more it
seems like our social institutions are "memes" of a sort; a military which
does not use bureaucracy loses wars to ones that do. A bureaucracy is thus
seen as a natural consequence of marshalling very large quantities of
resources. That is, a bureaucracy allows you to "ignore" details of the
collective -- at Microsoft you don't need to know what Janet from down the
hall is working on -- but then you don't feel like "part of" the collective
per se, and so we have to have a system of managers to both protect you from
the collective and to protect the collective from you (i.e. corruption & free
rider problems).

If you're less of a manager and more of a programmer then it's actually really
nice to think about how we might use this to architect software and/or to
collect nodes together. Capitalism might have an analogue for example in
developing the same software multiple times, and taking the simplest and most
elegant result.

~~~
ef4
Bureaucracy's strength is in getting repeatable results out of large numbers
of unreliable human beings. There are places where that's the best strategy.

But as soon as you're trying to do something unique or one-off or under-
specified, bureaucracy impedes more than it helps. Which is probably why large
bureaucratic organizations often get out-innovated by small organizations with
far less resources at their disposal.

Bureaucracy is a solution to a coordination problem that I would argue doesn't
really exist anymore. Software is, in one sense, bureaucracy codified in
mechanical form. It replaces and obsoletes human bureaucracy. The classic
bureaucrat essentially applies a rulebook to his input information and passes
output information to someone else. He is a human computer.

Even the evolution of war leaves open the question whether bureaucracy is an
asset or a liability going forward. War is getting faster and more targeted.

~~~
lutze
At least with a human there's the possibility they could be persuaded,
reasoned with, or even corrupted.

A computer on the other hand is utterly intractable. I'm not sure how that
would help with unique, one off or under-specified problems.

If you want your bureaucracy to be more adaptable, I'd argue you need to give
it more flexibility not less.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
>> A computer on the other hand is utterly intractable

I'm sure several people on here would disagree with that, as there are plenty
of people good at "convincing" computers to do things they shouldn't be doing,
or to do things that their owners don't want them to. You just have to be more
of a black hat, less of a schmmoozer....

~~~
lutze
Yeah, should've probably put a caveat in that!

I'd argue that even a hacked system is intractable though, as it still rigidly
follows the rules no matter the outcome. That's usually what black hats are
exploiting in the first place.

If the problem with bureaucracy is rigidity, then replacing human agency with
computed agency would only exacerbate that in my opinion.

~~~
sageikosa
For a fictional point of reference to the above sentiment: remember HAL 9000
in 2001: a Space Odyssey, and the explanation of why it went homicidal as
given in 2010: Odyssey Two. It had two directives: preserving human life and
the mission; the first conflicted with its ability to ensure the other's
success once the humans started plotting to turn HAL off. In the movie (at
least), it was implied that the mission's importance was imparted by
Presidential authority, and was given a higher priority than anything else.

------
newbie12
The article gets one fact wrong-- George W. Bush called for a manned mission
to the moon in 2020 and Mars thereafter, but was widely ridiculed, and
unsupported in Congress.

[http://articles.cnn.com/2004-01-14/tech/bush.space_1_space-e...](http://articles.cnn.com/2004-01-14/tech/bush.space_1_space-
exploration-mars-mission-human-missions?_s=PM:TECH)

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-still-working-on-
manne...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/bush-still-working-on-manned-
mission-to-mars-quiet,18154/)

------
lostnet
These government inefficiency arguments seem to ignore the fact that NASA
relied significantly on the small handful of large Aerospace companies, yet
those companies seem not to be involved in the private ventures that require
expanding capabilities.

I would look at the traditional space industry as similar to any unmotivated
~duopoly that is working in an industry with a pretty fixed income. Suddenly
they look more like other problem sectors (say US cable internet? US cell?
English Trains?)

In those industries the only possible improvements are from government
interference or public shaming with comparisons to efficient markets abroad.

The monster in the room is that traditional government outsourcing is a model
for constructing monopolies and trusts. The government avoids the complexity
of proportionally paying a dozen companies for the same task and few companies
can handle the complexity of working for the government.

Once created these trusts/monopolies that can't compete for rational customers
must still expand at 9% a year and are "too big to fail" and so based on
lobbying that the question of failure could never come up.

Outsourcing the government is like packaging up "government inefficiency" with
sector destroyers and some legal skimming off the top.

I would predict that as soon as one of these new companies is successful they
will be sued for all the IP the big aerospaces refuse to use, then acquired,
and then shelved.

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sami36
Maybe, This question is totally pointless. Because, it doesn't make sense to
go back to the Moon. What for ? it's a desolate rock, we've been there many
times already, brought back rocks, learned as much as we could about its
geology that we possibly could. Going back to the moon is at best an
entertainment proposition, it has no practical or scientific benefits.

The fact that we didn't go back on the moon doesn't say anything about
government. We might hold different opinions about its inefficiencies and
bloated nature, but none of them are relevant to this debate

Mars, on the other hand, holds a promise, although very remote & very
premature that it might one day host humans, even possibly a permanent
settlement.

~~~
wladimir
Do you really think that we know everything about the moon that there's to
learn? That, if we researched the moon with new scientific methods developed
since the 70's it would not tell us _anything_ new?

Sure, an economic benefits analysis may show out that we don't expect any
(direct) breakthroughs coming from moon research that will be worth the money.
Fair enough. But saying that it doesn't make sense is overly negative.

In the worst case it'd be an exercise in (applied) human space travel and
closed life support, which is also far from a solved problem... I suspect
visiting the moon needs to be "easy routine" before we can even start
seriously thinking about human settlements on Mars.

(and maybe we could try growing vegetables on the moon before the Chinese do
it :-)

~~~
sami36
You make a good point. We might not have learned everything that we could. My
point is we've learned _enough_. That was phrased poorly. That being said,
going to the moon would require huge investments. Allocating resources doesn't
happen in a vacuum, there is so much we can do with money that would be a
smarter & more productive allocation of capital than going back the moon.

I'm not against sending robotic probes a la Curiosity or pathfinder. But I'd
have a hard time advocating for a new Apollo program or a moon base unless &
until some clear benefit is established.

Regardless, the point of the article was the inefficiencies of government.
What I was arguing for is the pointlessness of bringing up this argument in
light of the questionable returns of a moon enterprise. There are many other
ways in which you could compare the efficiency of government investment vs
private capital (cancer research, infrastructure building, education,
healthcare )

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gliese1337
This seems to me a totally natural progression. Governments have the resources
to do New Untried Things, to fund Pure Research and Crazy National Pride
Projects, and so they do them because no one else can at the time that they
are done. But good governments are _supposed_ to be inefficient. Much as we
hate bureaucracy, an efficient government is a terrible, scary thing.
Inefficiency keeps it in check. So it falls to private enterprise to pick up
where governments leave off.

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jakozaur
Hmm, I wonder if same apply to mega projects. Cost overran and miss deadlines
a lot.

What is the main reason? The fact that they are hard, because they are complex
or because they are mostly managed by government. Perhaps, it is a combination
of both, but would love to read some scientific analysis about that.

~~~
Shivetya
Mostly because government is truly not accountable. Oh I mean we all read
about how they have all this accountability built in but in the end it doesn't
save us from what they do. The mentality of many in government is scary.

The add in all the purchasing rules, inclusion of minority group requirements,
cronyism, and more, and its no wonder why many projects are bound to cost more
and have so much waste.

An example of all that is wrong in US projects at least can be summarized by
looking that the rail project in California. They are so hell bent on doing
something that anything will do which in the end means nothing gets done
except a lot of money is expended.

Government has a spending problem in nearly all nations of this world.
Politicians do not fear accountability because they know how to play groups
off each other and how to buy off one group or another to keep themselves in
place.

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trustfundbaby
I've always felt that government running things like space exploration was a
bit odd . I think that government funded (all or in part) private enterprise
is the way to go, it worked for Columbus and other early adventurers right?

~~~
Avshalom
Well the reality is pretty much that anyway. It's not like NASA actually owns
the rocket factories. NASA provides the direction, man power during the
missions and cuts the checks but it's private* industry that does most of the
R&D and construction.

*well technically private but it varies from companies that exist purely on government contracts to companies like TI and boeing.

