Thank you to everyone who supports these projects on Patreon. I wouldn't be able to devote so much time and so many resources to one video otherwise. I'm trying to make the best work I can and the donations really do make it possible. If you'd like to chip in and support me, check out www.patreon.com/rchapman. Video notes below. Notes: I didn't talk about fraud in this video. Here's the scoop: We think we lose around 50-70 billion a year from fraud, most of it healthcare fraud. That's significant. But it's easier to measure losses from fraud than losses from inefficiency or from waste related to lobbying and interest groups. It's also the easiest to understand. If the government has a big pot of money and relatively loose security around that pot, people will take advantage and steal some (by claiming disabilities they don't actually have, for example). Increasing security helps solve the problem. I watched a podcast by The Office Of Inspector General that said - as of 2019 - we have 1600 people working for the OIG to 'root out fraud, waste and abuse' related to healthcare. That seems like a low number to me. I also suspect that if we made reforms that made our government more competent and brought more talented people into government, they'd be more motivated to stop fraud and would find more elegant ways to do it. This video did not go into why governments are more wasteful than private organizations (no profit incentive, not spending their own money). My focus was more specific. I said: given that it is a government (which assumes we're not thinking about privatizing whatever the government is doing), these are aspects of that government, and things that are happening in that society that are causing inefficiency and waste. I considered this a subject that most people do not want to spend long watching (books about budgeting problems, for example, don't exactly fly off the shelves), so I had to made decisions about what to include and what not to include in order to keep the runtime down and reach a broader audience. It's also worth saying that I didn't mean to imply that other governments around the world aren't wasteful, or that the US has the most wasteful government on the planet. When I said things like 'X makes the government uniquely wasteful,' I meant that the government is highly wasteful in a manner that's distinct to the US. Not that the US is more wasteful than anywhere else. I try to make my phrasing as clear as possible and anticipate how I might be misinterpreted, but I'm still learning. Another point that I wish I brought up: politicians are also incentivized to be friendly and accommodating towards lobbyists because they (in the last 50 years or so) tend to seek work in the lobbying field once they're out of office, which is called the 'revolving door.' If politicians, while in office, develop friendly relationships with lobbying firms, one would think that would facilitate finding work there upon retirement. Again, there could be a temptation to pass legislation suggested by the lobbying firms that isn't necessarily a good use of money or in the public interest, if it seems like it will give said politician a path to a lucrative career once they're out of office. It's something that's hard to prove, but is regardless widely seen, even within Washington, as a big issue. One last thing: if you want to do your own research on what I talked about in the second half of this video, I'd suggest looking up 'rent-seeking' and 'the logic of collective action.' - Ryan
@@olsterman937 Trust me I watch these videos enough times over before I upload them that I wouldn't miss something like that. With my gestures I was trying to say 'on one hand this' and 'on one hand that.'
Great video. I would also add the appropriations process as another reason the government is so wasteful. Basically, every year federal agencies receive an "appropriation," or funding for that fiscal year. The appropriation is then subdivided into catagories with rules stipulating how that money can legally be spent. If an agency fails to spend the entirety of its appropration, they run a high risk of budget cuts the following year. As such, agencies often make purchases simply to spend all the money in its appropration regardless of actual need. For example, say the Veterans Administration is nearing the fiscal year and still has money left in the "furniture" subcatagory of its appropriation, it will buy new furniture to replace furniture that was just purchased the previous year.
Ryan, the problem is, neo-liberals (that's the Republican and most of the Democrat parties) don't want government jobs. Though those jobs would provide decent pay for more people. They want everything privatized. They want our government to be run like a business. A business framework does not work on people. Because corporate business owns our government, they have been running our country like a business for many many years already and all that has done is deregulate protections for the public and allowed regulations for corporations that allow greed, corruption, monopolization, job going overseas, etc.
As a jet engine mechanic for the military, I see this every day, and it's so frustrating. I accidentally break something while assembling an engine, say I bent the probe of a thermocouple, or scratched the sealing face of a metalic seal. I go to supply to pick up a new part and see that that thermocouple is priced at $1700, or that metal seal is $4000. Also mind you that the engines I'm working on are nearly 50 year old designs, we're not talking about cutting edge stuff. As an amatuer machinist, these are parts that I could replicate for dozens of dollars without the aid of billion dollar factories that military contractors possess. At the same time, the military can't find the funds to replace lead drinking water pipes on base, or tear down barracks and dormitories riddled with black mold. It really makes you think about how much further that $773B budget would go if we paid normal prices for things, or how much of that $773B we could save and spend on things like our education or healthcare, or infrastructure. I'm practically in a state desperation at the thought that our government will never accomplish anything noteworthy with these constraints. It has genuinely made me never want to work for the government again after I get out.
You're perfectly placed to answer this question: my understanding is that people outraged over the cost of a bolt or a screw on a military jet are misunderstanding some of the engineering that can go into said fasteners. For example often they're designed to break or shear in a very specific manner during disintegration. Is there any truth to that which explains some of the cost?
@@edthoreum7625 I made my comment with things in mind like cutting tool cost, material cost, pre/post measurement, post-processing requirements (like surface grinding, annealing, or hardening) and CNC programming time. Granted, 'dozens of dollars' might have been an understatement, as it didn't really account for my time or expertise. But as one man I could make a profit by charging something in the range of hundreds of dollars for such a part. Because of economies of scale, any manufacturer making that part by the hundreds or thousands (which is not unreasonable considering many of these parts are sold to our allies who operate similar aircraft) is paying substantially less in manufacturing costs per unit. Even when you factor in the procurement cost of equipment and factories, the price of such a part should almost certainly be dirt cheap after a production run of 50 years when all those assets are paid off. The massive thing I haven't even mentioned is that a lot of these parts are refurbished or recycled from the old ones the military sent back, meaning that the manufacturer eliminates even more of the manufacturing cost. With all this in mind, I can say with absolute certaintly that the military is overcharged, atleast by aerospace manufacturers.
@@richardpritzel1892 My reply to Ed Thoreum is applicable to your question. Certainly there are factors which justify a bolt on a fighter jet being two, three, even ten times more expensive. For example they might have holes machined in the head for safety wire, or come coated in a high-temperature anti-sieze. But as someone who works with them every day, it is absolutely ludicrous to see them go for twenty to one hundred times the normal cost for an equivalent bolt. They seemingly strip, break, melt, and sieze just as easily as any bolt I've ever seen. In fact, I've seen jets that were assembled using non-standard bolts probably from a hardware store that had no problems.
Maybe you could replicate them, but could you, and every other mechanic in the military, replicate them consistently enough that planes don’t fall out of the sky? Also, could you originate them? Could you design the plane? Because those costs are factored into all of the parts. R&D, quality control, etc. is always a huge part of the cost of military hardware.
Here is how this worked in practice, when I had a small software company, and we got requests for bids from government agencies: The rules and processes you had to comply with in order to submit your bid and to complete the project once you won the bid were so onerous and cumbersome that we quickly realized that we needed to bid 4-5 times(!) higher prices than we would have done for the same project for a private client. Keep in mind, I am not talking about rules to make the software safer or more useful or equitable, or anything like that. The rules were ONLY designed to allow the agency to prove that they were not overpaying for their software. We had to hire extra people, just to stay on top of the rules process, rather than just write the software. (In reality, this pretty much disqualified all small companies, as large consulting firms like IBM had entire departments on staff, just for these kinds of processes, and since they had no competition, they made it worth their time by hugely overcharging the government clients.) So, the processes that were set up to ensure governments weren't being overcharged (or gave contracts to their buddies) resulted in the exact opposite; namely that they had to pay multiples of what any other client would pay. Distrust is EXTREMELY expensive!
All true, but trust is even worse. Take away those processes and 100% of contracts will go to their friends at the highest possible rate, in exchange for the usual hidden kickbacks and future employment etc. The only reasonable solution is to shrink government to the smallest possible size with the fewest possible responsibilities so that the waste is minimized.
@@lilowhitney8614 Not at all, governments can fall anywhere on the spectrum. We're certainly not the fullest extent of possible rules, we just lean harder that way than most. My point was merely that the rules are there for a reason, and there are many examples around the world of what happens when there are fewer rules. Ultimately this is about power and corruption, and the corrosive effects of power, both on individuals, and on the sorts of people who will apply for positions of power. The solution remains the same. If you want less corruption, give the government less power to be corrupt with.
Isn't it a wonderful world when someone can come out of nowhere on RUclips and just blow your mind with the clarity and scholarly integrity of their work
Why are people so suprised by this? The scholary info on RUclips has already passed that of, television, the world's universities, approaching print. The only place it falls short is hyper specific hyper high resolution info found in scientific journals. As far as teaching the public it is only rivaled by the printing press, which will soon be decimated in scale if it hadn't already.
@@THEGODDAMNDINOSAURi think stuff like this should be mandatory in public schools, relatively unbiased and sticking to the facts and when its not it its pretty admitting of it
It’s a pleasure to watch due to the clarity of articulation in your content. And refreshing topics, that actually matter, that don't get media light. Thank you Ryan!
My father worked at a dry dock once. The part numbers for all the items they used on the ship had different military designations from their civilian counterparts. Some of them were because the military had special requirements that the civilian ones did not, such as a military bulldozer needing to fit a non-standard size battery used by all military vehicles, thus requiring a modified battery compartment and door, different from its civilian counterparts. But most parts were 1:1 identical, and only had different part numbers because they were painted olive green from the factory, and/or for the sake of keeping everything filed away in the same catalog. A simple fluorescent light-bulb, identical in every way to a civilian light-bulb with the same rating, would cost more than double the price or sometimes more, for no other reason other than it being a military light-bulb.
I grew up near the Argentia US Naval Station in Newfoundland, and when it was decommissioning I remember going with my father for a public liquidation sale of a lot of office furniture. I remember seeing an office chair (which we ended up buying and I used for years) that had a tag on it reading "Not Cost Effective To Repair". There was literally 1 screw loose on one of the arm rests. That always stuck with me.
Good video. The key takeaway for me is that the "checks and balances" portion is creating some inefficiency itself and not reducing it, like it should. One would think that constant oversight by both other agencies and the public would reduce the likelihood that a hotel room costs $3k/night or a submarine costs 5-10x what it should, but it doesn't, specifically because of the rules and regulations imposed on the government itself. For example, the "use it or lose it" rule in budgeting is huge.
I think you mean the "rules and regulations" portion. Democratic checks and balances are intended to create inefficiency in order to prevent people from consolidating power too easily and creating dictatorships.
The checks and balances system isn't supposed to increase efficiency. The checks and balances system is not designed for a sprawling government but a lean one. A more autocratic government is more suitable for a sprawling government.
That constant oversight slows things down and takes effort to carry out thereby increasing spending needed for the same outcome. Checks and balances don't increase efficiency, they decrease it. The question is whether or not that decrease is worth it. If we want to prevent oil spills, cancerous drugs etc and other harmful effects to citizens and consumers, then we accept that inefficiency as the price of that protection. However if put too many checks and balances on government contracts for example, then that cost may be just too high for our taste so we'd have to accept less oversight and transparency for affordability. It's a balancing act of trade offs. Don't blindly think checks and balances are inherently good or that 100% efficiency for businesses is the aim of the game. They're not.
This might be my favorite video of yours! Thank you. One interesting thing I have heard is a huge waste of money in many government sectors ( primarily military) is how departments will have an allotted budget for a year, and if they perform well without needing to use the whole budget it will get slashed the following year(to be less wasteful). In a tragedy of the commons scenario the department will of course only think about itself and frivolously spend up to the allotted budget just to ensure they get at least the same budget the following year.
Freeman's Mind (which has Ross Scott narrating the thoughts of Gordon Freeman as he goes through the Half Life games) does a great bit on this to explain some of the weird level designs in Half Life 1, basically chalking up the ridiculous areas (like the giant nutcracker room, or the bottomless pit box smashing room) as being attempts to pad out the budget so they get more funding next year.
This is true not only for government but also major corporations. Management makes sure to spend every penny they can because if they don't they will lose it.
That "American taxpayer's lobbying organization", lobbying for efficient spending that would benefit a broader group, actually sounds like an amazing idea and someone should definitely do it - I'd subscribe
@@kaiepstein5331 The exact same joke instantly popped into my head when I read penguin's comment. That isn't to say penguin is wrong, It would be a fantastic organization that I would be happy to support as well, but I'm also honest enough to admit that it won't be me who puts in the ungodly amount of time and effort that would be required to get something like that off the ground.
I moved to Germany and they have an organization that represents taxpayers here "Bund der Steuerzahler" (=taxpayers association). Some nerds are on TV once a year and publish a list of the most absurd government spending/waste. They compare the scope of the problem to previous years and name the government bodies/ministries, who supported those types of deals. It's stuff along the lines of paying 137$ for a screw, that would definitely make it on the list. The press conference is pretty well visited by news corps and it makes national news every year on that evening. Then, for a week, journalists and late night comedy shows spend their time finding the funniest and dumbest expenses and it definitely comes up when talking to friends on a break, like: "Did you hear that [insert town name] spent 300,000€ to cut down 12 trees, so that the church tower was visible from the Autobahn, when driving past the town? And that they replanted the trees for another 100,000€ after they had deemed it a mistake due to environmental reasons". "Yeah man, crazy. In Wuppertal they payed 400,000€ to put five golden benches on a public square...". Whenever that association makes a public statement on any spending that is supposed to pass soon or that has been decided already, that expense gets a lot of media attention and makes the public opinion more visible, which sometimes prevents the spending.
@@tristanmoller9498 I as a german citizen, and i am really disappointed about the „Bund der Steuerzahler“, because it is dominated not by „normal taxpayers“ but mostly by rich persons from the private economy, which hope to benefit by influencing policy by lobbyist activities and a big reach advantage compared to other organisations. Also the Bund der Steuerzahler doesnt make in depth research on wasteful spending like Chapman has described, remember the sugar industry, but focuses on micro stuff like misplaced railway gates. Generally speaking its a lobby group pretending to work in favor for society.
So basically to oversimplify the whole video: In an attempt to keep our democracy democratic, we created an inefficient government that creates a bunch of waste. There are 2 methods the a organization can use to approach a problem: Method 1: Let the employees use their brains to solve our problems. We may put guidelines in to try to help, but those guidelines are just recommendations. We may also put some rules that the employee can't break, but the employee should still have a lot of control over how they solve this problem. (Ex: Average small and/or midsized restaurant) Method 2: We will put rules on how to do this thing every step of the way. They can't deviate away from the rules, even if it is more efficient to just deviate from it sometimes. (Ex: McDonalds) Sometimes it's more efficient to do method 1, sometimes it's more efficient to do method 2. The majority(AKA the bigger group) doesn't feel like lobbying not despite its large numbers, but due to its large numbers that everyone believes everyone else will go ahead and lobby, and the opposite is true for smaller groups. Due to this the people making the decisions may only be exposed to arguments in favor of the smaller group(Sometimes at the expense of the bigger group), which isn't helped by the fact that the smaller group may already have arguments and counterarguments prepared to support things that favor the smaller group. Our military is a whole other mess to explain in terms of wastefulness in this video due to our military maintaining state-of-the-art tech. To best explain it, it's by a case-to-case basis. In an attempt to reduce wastefulness, we support actions that will help increase wastefulness. Edit: And I just got to the last part of the video, which shows a summary of the video.
He skimmed the part where the bigger group (the low to middle income earners, the 90%) nowadays have less combined disposable income than the smaller group (the rich and super-rich, the 1%) to spend on lobbying, causing a feedback loop leading to less and less government resources being allocated to further the interest of workers, and more and more to furthering the interests of the super-rich. He also didn't mention how the smaller group not only lobbies government officials, but also lobbies the bigger group itself, as owners of the media, the news media in particular. By the smaller group limiting and directing discourse, the bigger group is convinced not to act in opposition of the smaller group. I recommend "Inventing Reality" by Michael Parenti - significantly less dry than "Manufacturing Consent", which covers some of the same topics.
@@c99kfm All excellent points. And these principles point inexorably to the importance of education. If one hopes to have any chance of transcending the social caste into which they were born, a solid education is a prerequisite. Higher education does not equate to intelligence, but it can teach skills that are critical not only for the straightforward tasks of obtaining careers in lucrative industries, but more importantly it can teach the language of the game being played. The concept of directing discourse to achieve an objective is happening constantly around us, on numerous levels and in ways which we may or may not notice, depending on the level of sophistication and the degree to which we happen to agree with the intended objective. Which is to say, it is not necessarily nefarious and is in fact often for the benefit of the viewer. But the more you understand the language of business, finance, healthcare, technology, etc, the more capable you become of identifying the subtle abuses of such language, the euphemisms that misleadingly wrap things which are detrimental to public interests in appealing sentiment, the obfuscation of unpleasant truths in unnecessary layers of technical complexity, the manipulation of statistics or blatantly fallacious application of statistical inference, or misdirection of attention through the use of fear- or grievance-based arguments centered on topics that are far less relevant or impactful than the topic being downplayed. For every instance of this we notice, there are at least a handful we do not notice. We live in a constant riptide of information, and we are all in an ongoing battle to keep our heads above water. These are strange days.
In and attempt to keep our "democracy democratic we". Who exactly is we, for sure we is not you or me. We have allowed a government, which is no longer ours to control, to lead use to believe that it's a democracy when it's is, according to the constitution, suppose to be a constutional republic. The real battle, in the AI world of today, for control is between the global working class and the global ruling class. Unfortunately for the WC the RC are winning this on going seemingly never ending battle for total control. In many ways they have won! One example of how we know they've won is that the writer of this comment firmly believes that this country is a democracy based on being a democratic system that is fundamentally based on what benefits the many and not the rights of the individual!
But Russia, China and EU have same military tech yet they don't spend as much, US military spending being so high is due to price gouging and corruption in the military industrial complex, defence contractors and congressman make a lot of money, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual US military budget is around 300-400 billion. 60 minutes did in an exposé on this
The idea that "special interest" groups have disproportionate effect on policy has a bearing on our debate about individualized free speech. When I speak only for myself, I tend to be less willing to join with others who claim to have grievances -- so it may be harder for legitimate group grievances to get seriously addressed.
I wanted to add the nuance that some of these grievances come from what we call "marginalized groups" that are often recognized legally as "protected classes" (and drive, for example., some of the "hate speech" policies on many tech platforms). So this observation has a much larger meaning on the Left (whose "tribal" political constituencies often were abused or upended in the past -- "critical theory", etc.) than on the Right, whose tribal groupings resist having privileges or assets they had "enjoyed" being taken away from them by political force. So I think this part of the problem complicates Ryan's presentation. Eventually I expect to do a more polished (than usual for me) video on this problem myself.
While I learn rather more Left, I agree in the broad strokes. Special interest groups have a lot of say on all sides there too, and at times (e.g. when bad faith arguments arise with government "tone policing") starts distracting from larger issues. Free speech is a complicated issue though that I don't think fully fits the comparison to special interest group lobbying in other areas (TL;DR of below, applies only to government not to private entities, which people on all sides sometimes forget. Government can't step in to impose rules on speech without intense scrutiny, for very good reason, like they can with goods and services and regulations). As an aside though, do keep in mind that not siding with others who claim to have grievances (if absolute -- I know you said "less") is siding with a society that wants to remain complacent and unchanging. I can understand wanting to conserve your time and energy to choose your own battles, but people with grievances are the only ones pushed to make a change in society (why bother if you have nothing to gain and everything to lose, yeah?) and making the world better involves people like yourself guiding that change. Equating "legitimate" with "lack of grievances" becomes a very dangerous thought, then, because it assumes there's no level of scrutiny possible to legitimize or "make good" of an effort to change. Staying stagnant forever is a lie of convenience (just not how the world works, and always trending mildly negative) and upholding status quo by not being motivated toward change is just asking for bad actors to step in as authority figures and declare a new "status quo". (Free speech part) The scope of free speech protections in the US is limited in the sense that it only binds the government itself in how it can protect or (in very select cases) sidestep the right to free speech. It strongly binds / is imposed on only the government, in most cases unless laws are made which attempt to more broadly enforce or sidestep that (in which cases, those laws are very carefully scrutinized to maintain free speech, of course for very good reason). For the most part, it binds / imposes very little burden on private entities (individuals, companies running social media platforms, etc.) from setting and enforcing their own rules to allowable speech, also for very good reason. It's not up to the courts to decide what people consider **acceptable** speech, only that which causes abject harm (fighting words, slander, Title IX harrassment, conspiracy to commit a crime) People on both sides of the debate on "hate speech" commonly confuse this, for example. Aside from the current statutes regarding slander and etc., some """Twitter warriors""" (minority) on the Left who believe the government should step in to criminalize offensive speech are misguided. On the other hand, some """Twitter warriors""" (hopefully minority) on the Right who think free speech gives them a free societal pass to be offensive and hateful without societal consequences are also very mistaken (even in the US court of law, often don't realize that free speech DOES have select few limitations). I hope the importance of the US government not infringing on peoples' free speech here, and how this differs from societal expectations, is obvious. Like for example, no one's taking away your [I hope generally speaking] freedom to say extremely hateful and offensive things that only moderately harm people, but it can make you a terrible enough person to be around (e.g. actively denying their rights to personhood via speech alone) that no one wants to associate with you. Government or political force isn't what's stepping in there 😅. By contrast, government can and SHOULD step in where necessary to enforce the necessary rules and regulations on goods and services on private entities, at least to some degree, especially when bidding on / contracting for the government. We don't want all our planes and submarines to sink, our roads and buildings to crumble into dust, our education or healthcare system to become nonexistant, etc. etc. I hope that baseline is obvious too, though, how much government should step in there is a discussion for a different time.
This is perhaps one of the best channels I’ve come across recently. Not only am I going to binge-watch all your videos, but also I’ll be tuning in to your future content!
I worked for a food laboratory that has both US and Canada branch. When I visited our state counterpart, I was shocked on how much they get from government contract. Here in Canada, government gigs don’t really pay well, and they have a lot of audit. In US, they pay nearly double the price without oversight, simply because the lab is “FDA approved”
I've seen a number of your videos and I wanted to thank you for doing such a great job--specifically, for discussing issues in a factual way without perceivable bias, which is a huge virtue. The very fact that I cannot tell where you yourself stand on issues and what your opinions are, is a very huge (and difficult) accomplishment. Blatant bias is what everyone else is doing, so thank you.
I wanted to add something I was told over 20 years ago by a faculty member at the university I went to (FYI it was focused on engineering so many of the instructors and professors had worked in industry) I was at a cantina shop on campus one night and started talking with another student and a faulty member (different department from my degree). The other student and I both made negative comments about the government paying hundreds of dollars for a hammer (that at a store would have been a few bucks). The faculty member stopped us and asked "do you know why it is that way?" We just blamed corruption, wastefulness, etc. He told us it was badly written contracts. In the contracts, it is highly detailed out, where, how, with what, etc, a part is to be made, assembled with others, the entire production process. The issue is sometimes things like tool kits (for maintenance) or small incidental items are listed as needed to be supplied with, but the contractor/manufacturer can not sub out said item. So now, the aircraft builder has to figure out how to make hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc and buying the tools and dies for making such. (Another side note: my degree and work experience is mechanical engineering/manufacturing) this learning to make something is very costly (especially for limited production runs) and yes, they could hire/buy/liscense knowledge from a tool maker company, but why would they want to educate a potential rival??? So, because of restrictions in the contract, the supplier has to do something they are not set up to do and then do it on a small scale (ie more costly because of failed attempts) the final cost becomes ridiculously stupid.
When I worked for the USN I saw some serious money wasting. One example was seeing an aircraft flying around doing touch an goes. I asked a guy next to me if someone needed to get some training or seat time in. No he said, they are burning off fuel so their fuel allotment would not get cut next month. Let's not forget the added wear and tear on the engines and airframe which has major costs as well. Another was when a coworker was telling me about an avionics upgrade that the Navy brass and operators did not even want, but was told by congress to do it anyway. We're talking about several million per aircraft. I'm sure the equipment supplier contributes to their congressman, heavily. Then there is how my spouse had stint in the University of California system and how a project that might take 6 weeks in the private sector would take 6 months at US. Not because of any particular process requirement, but that there was no particular urgency to actually get anything done, and zero consequence for not doing so. In fact there were staff that seemed intent on slowing the process down. Maybe you would like to hear that there are multiple IT departments running incompatible software. Or simply that there were people who seemed to have no function other than occasionally go to meetings which resulted in nothing (see above) other than to fill up the day so they could collect a paycheck. In conclusion, we surmised it was nothing more than a welfare system for UC graduates (90+%) who probably would be making lattes for a living at nowhere near their government salary.
I live in Denmark, where we have what people might call 'big government' (welfare, somewhat more state interferrence). But often, when I or someone I know interact with the US government, we are surprised by just how much bureaucracy is involved, even compared to the Danish government. Somehow, the US has managed to create a large 'small government'...
People scream about "small government" in America, PRECISELY because the federal government is so big. And has the potential (and many would say an interest) in growing even bigger. It's not that *everyone* wants small government here (evidently they don't), it's just that your notion as a foreigner of what it means to be American is about demanding small government.
Underrated video. It-s not often a youtube channel would provide you with an insight that was never obvious to you, even though it's rather simple and clear in its reasoning. Yet you seem to be able to do it with almost every video. It would be interesting to compare some "efficient" governments to the US. Singapore is probably the best example.
_"Why is the government so wasteful?"_ Because it's easy to be wasteful when you personally suffer no consequences and you're expending other people's resources. Taxation is theft, and government is a racket.
One other aspect to consider is the multiple levels of government. Going back to infrastructure. Let's say there's a bridge in disrepair. That is not part of a federal or state highway system. The local government says it doesn't have the money. It's more advantageous for the local government to wait on repairs until it's an emergency so they can then petition the state or the federal government.
Yes but a lot of people who watches political videos don't want to be educated, they want their ideas reinforced; they want to watch videos that agree with their opinions, their ideas, their ideologies, their beliefs only.
Just remember WHO is getting this 'waste'. This 'waste' goes to mostly really BIG government contractors and private medical agglomerations. They are the happy recipients of this 'waste'.
I work for the government and I see the inefficiencies, as well as the long process of bickering between different departments and agencies. As well the long procedures and paperwork we have to follow just to get something done or receive money to do it. The US government is basically a constant ongoing negotiating struggle just like a bar fight that only ends once people either tireds out and gives up or we just forget about what our original goal was and hope it resolves itself. Usually doesn't. Lol.
The answer is much simpler than he states. **You'll always spend other people's money with less concern than you will spend your own.** That's it. The farther removed the money is from the person directly responsible for earning it, they less people will care. And maliciousness can leak in easier as well, but even assuming people were all angels, you just have no clue what it took to get that money as the earner vs the need for what it's being spent on. So the best someone could do is some very VERY bad guesses.
Our biggest problem is we don’t make it easy to be pull back laws and programs if the President and Congress have the power too. It should be like a ratchet. Fast and easy to unwind but slow to add too.
@@theBear89451 There is no party that is "pro-waste" and advocating that we be more wasteful. The only two positions on government waste are either indifference or anti-wastefulness. No rational actor would ever push for more waste because it pushes up wages. Dunno where you heard this, but it's clearly absurd. You should spend less time listening to what politicians are telling you they are trying to do (Republicans, for example, always saying they're trying to stop wastefulness - it's bullshit, of course, they're just giving the money to different special interests than the other guys), and more time watching what they're actually doing. Both parties let themselves be lobbied by special interests. Both parties sneak ear marks and pork barrel spending into bills. You seem to have missed the entire message of this video, which is that the system and the shape we as a society have forced it into encourages the wrong behavior for the outcomes that we expected. We want government to work for all Americans, but we only incentivize it to work for small, individual interest over our broader social and national interest. It's possible to go too far in the other direction, of course, and to start damaging individual interest and freedom for the sake of the state (Soviet Russia, anyone?). But it's a balancing act that we are not very good at.
Ty Ron, good vid. My addtion to that "inefficient goverment dilemma" is that there is no (financial) incentive for the politicians to make government less wasteful. On the contrary, from the perspective of a peoples representative (aka politicians) there is every incentive to overspent, over budget. Not only does this raise the chances of reelection but also give them personally a good shot after time their government time to work for these companies for whom the lobbying was done, or give (nonsense) speeches for what they get each time 6-figures paid. My suggestion would be to give each politician a profit share of 20% of the surplus in his or her budget. So if they manage to spend less than they take in they get paid. But if they overspent, well then they pay 20% out of their personal pocket. Then we as the people could start trust our repreentatives again, because there would be a strong incentive to spent the money wisely, or even better to not spent it at all. Another important factor is that the social rebalancing (taking from the rich and giving it to the poor like social security) is part of the budget. And are not separated from rest of spending, sadly. People beeing afraid loosing out on some social payments let politicians get away with wasteful spending in other areas. So it is better to have two separate budgets (Social and everything else). By seperating those two, and financing social rebalancing by a seperate wealth duty, people would put more pressure on the politicians to reduce wasteful spending, because they know that this would not effect the social rebalancing. Just my two cents here .... Keep your good work, ty again.
Thanks Ryan Chapman, I really appreciate videos like this that take an extremely critical look into politics and pulls back the alluring veil of partisanship to reveal the complex reality of how the world works. If more people understood how and why government spending can become so wasteful, I wonder if the political discussions and issues would be different? I don’t know about most folks but I think one of the biggest issues that we actually face as a nation is whether or not we should abolish lobbying.
The US government originally created was very efficient at doing what it was supposed to do: stay out of the way of the people. As history shows, many institutions like healthcare or education, and even public works, worked very well before the federal government was expanded to take control of them from local governments and the people. So, it is not that we created a government that is inefficient; it's that with the years we have allowed the government to bloat into a sticky mess that now infects every tiny aspect of everything and everyone. What we have now is not the government that was intended, but a corrupted and perverse disfiguration of it.
Another great video, Ryan. Discovered you yesterday, and now I’m bingeing while the grass doesn’t get mowed. I watched Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation live, as a kid, on a tiny black and white TV. He warned Americans about the military industrial complex. I never forgot that. Here was the outgoing President, a retired war time general, warning us about something big. I thought, “this cannot be good. I’ll see how this pans out.” Spoiler alert: it has not panned out well at all.
Consultants are a big problem. My father is on the state school board and according to him there are some many groups that get a piece of the pie before it even gets dispersed to the actual schools.
While the government is studying the environmental impact of repaving the roads, i hit a pot hole, bent my wheel, my tire is not fixable, so 4 tires, a wheel, and an alignment later, theres still potholes
The difference in private industry is that we have less public oversight any time we clown around. Sometimes outsiders confuse their lack of insight as simple end users with efficiency. You can create a job for your useless cousin, sneak in a consultant. A lot of stuff the public would see as corruption and waste elsewhere.
I think a big part of the problem is that there is a disconnect between how the government is designed to function and how our political system functions. In the quote from James Madison that you used, he was talking about separation of powers and also federalism which the United States is absolutely designed with a lot of. However, if you listen to politicians, especially presidential candidates, they speak as though these government boundaries don’t exist. Then, when they get into power they have to work within the boundaries and their proposals don’t work. The solution is for Americans to stop focusing on Congress and start focusing on the Statehouse.
As far as the very first question in the video, I worked with an engineer at my job a few years ago who previously worked for NASA on various classified projects. He told me that the reason for the 900 dollar hammers and 5000 dollar toilet seats is essentially because government agencies list those items in place of components used for sensitive projects on spreadsheets. It's basically a legalized form of money laundering.
I thought parts of the military and intelligence budget was black. It is a budget post but there is no accounting for where it goes. It's a lump of cash where the lawmakers do not openly debate, or are not privy to, any details. The lack of oversight when something is classified is a whole other deal.
US federal government is slow by design, but it shouldn’t be inefficient. If the government is too inefficient at a task, one must ask why that task is given specifically to the government, and if it should be in the government’s hands, then how do they distribute it to the state and local level and minimize corruption with the private sector? But one must also be weary of micromanagement by any sector, because micromanagement, especially by non-engineers such as politicians, is a major source of inefficiency. Having worked multiple engineering jobs by this point, know the difference can be staggering
This is a great, albeit depressing, video. I'm forced to wonder if there is any way we can make the government work a little more smoothly and efficiently without overly compromising our democratic values and process.
Sure! The first step, I think, is to acknowledge it will never be perfect. We will have mistakes, we will have errors in judgment. We want to minimize but accept we won't end waste. The second, I think, is having strong advocates for accountability. Is it a taxpayer advocacy group (As he alluded to in the video)? Is it more government inspectors general who have strong power to investigate fraud, waste and abuse? Is it more subsidies to local news organizations that aren't part of big entertainment conglomerates so we can shine a bright light on waste when it happens? Any of those would help and I bet there are even better ideas out there.
@@x--. a tax payer advocacy group. Jesus Christ. You mean like...people you vote for???? He really beat around the fundamental problem so it's not surprising to see this. The problem is bribery of elected officials through campaign donations or later lobbying jobs. Any new entity group you create will be crushed under the billions of dollars of wasted money you went looking for as those interest groups oppose you with bribes. That will never reduce government inefficiency because the money doesn't disappear, it's collected by corporations that directly benefit from and actively push for it. The inefficiency literally comes from government attempting to provide public services while also serving The Market.
The whole point of socialism was to democratize the economy. Basically, ignore market forces and replace them with a political process that controls the economy instead. It didn't work for the exact same reasons as you describe here. Democratization is not always a benefit and it might be overvalued in the west today.
Also the tools that work on the assumed Ti screw must be Cadmium free. Cadmium can scratch Ti and start a stress fracture. So that is where you get the $700 wrench due to adhering to milspec.
Plus the military likes to place orders for things that haven’t been made in 20 years, which makes their contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors have to reinvent the wheel.
Point #2 is why one of my favorite current campaign promises is "I'm going to veto every legislation that doesn't get rid of ten old regulations for every new regulation it proposes."
There's one critical component to the dysfunction of our system that this video fails to mention. The Polarization of our society. When the people of a country hate each other so much- they tend to elect politicians who won't cooperate with the other side under any circumstances even on Issues that everybody agrees on... what this means is that one party needs to control all 3 branches of the government if it wants to get anything done, and since that's usually not the case- things usually don't get done.
My theory is that the government has no need for money and does whatever it wants. With everything going digital who’s to say how much those in power have to spend anyway. It could all be created out of thin air and explained to us as wasteful spending. Sometimes I feel our taxes are a form of social control to keep us bounded by the economic struggles in our lives all the while a secret agenda is being pushed to transform society.
Have you looked at our military budget? The highest in the supposedly free world. Meanwhile we’re consistently told that there is no money to help the people actually living in this country. The best defense is to have a happy healthy population, not how many bombs we can drop on innocent people in other countries.
Something I want to add to this discussion is that one of government's unique characteristics, in contrast with both private companies and individuals, is that there is no profit motive or a bottom line to consider. Ordinary people have to contend with the consequences of debt and potential bankruptcy, whereas government has no hard-defined limit to its borrowing and spending, thereby reducing the incentive to bargain for better prices, even when you factor out the influence of lobbying. The only drawback from a congressman's perspective is the electoral fallout that may occur in the distant future as a result of wasteful spending (like inflation for example), but human beings tend to act in favor of the short-term rather planning for a theoretical future that's still a ways out.
One thing to consider with small items is the cost to the supplier to provide the paperwork required to conform to all the regulations. It might cost few hundred dollars to respond to a request for tender. If a company wins one in ten it then needs to recoup a few thousand dollars on the winning bid. If the request is for 10 hammers youre now looking at 100s of dollars per hammer. If someone had just walked into the store to purchase then they could obtain a much cheaper price.
Ryan, I originally came across your video about fascism and I am so happy I clicked on it! Over the last week I have now consumed almost all of your content. I truly love these dives into our past and clarification of these political and economic and social terms. I feel like I just took a collage course, with a high degree of value. I truly thank you for your work and look forward to following what else you cover.
Hey Ryan, I was just curious why you removed your video on when life began. I thought it was given in a clear and objective, and as you suggested can move the debate on abortion forward. Big fan of your work.
I am European, from Malta, and our model is the complete opposite of the American system. Our politicians do not face any regulation, any democratic restriction, and are free to act as they please without possible fallout. The result is unprecedented corruption and special favors-we even had bureaucrats give unworthy people social benefit schemes (from taxpayer money) to win over their vote. It is chaos. The only solution, as I see it, is not reverting to the American system, but privatizing public/social works as much as possible to leave government out of it.
You just get an oligarchy, which is exactly what the US is - ruled by corporations and oligarchs, who never have the public's best interests, and only answer to their greed.
It's been discussed in other comments here, but I want add to it to drive the point a little further home. With regards to the military spending obscene amounts of money for screws (and other hardware and tools), it's possible that there's actually a good reason. Military and aerospace applications are very specific. A bolt for an airplane could easily cost $10,000 depending on the material it's made of, the cutting tools used to make it, the type of hardening or annealing needed, the setup and measuring that takes place before and after machining, the software used to make the CNC program, the machine used for fabrication, the time and talent of the machinist, and more. Modern manufacturing is neither simple, nor cheap. That's because it's very demanding. If what the military is buying for these projects are simple things you can find at a hardware store, then yes, we have a case of both price gouging and reckless spending. I'd be willing to bet though that most, if not all, the hardware needed for military weapons' primary functions and such are custom made to meet tight tolerances and specifications, as well as work in extreme circumstances. If we want to cut down on costs regarding manufactured parts, then one could argue for less strict regulations and standards, but for things like weapon systems and vehicles, that could be disastrous. And, just in case it comes up, I am a machinist. This is what I do for a living. For full disclosure, I don't work with aerospace or military projects, but the considerations, planning, and processes are the same. The only difference is the standard of quality required by the industry and customer (in this case, the military). There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people don't know about.
If we *REALLY* distrusted government, we wouldn't demand it do so many things in the first place. The problem is that there is a big enough portion of the population that *does* trust the government (at least when their preferred candidates are in in the majority), they are the ones who constantly push for government to do more things, even though the rest of us don't want that. But the people who don't trust government aren't nearly as motivated to demand it be rolled back as are those who want to see it expanded. So it only ever grows, even if in fits and starts.
Yeah, the logic of 'We don't trust our Government enough, if we did, then it wouldn't be so wasteful!' is honestly hilarious as to how naïve it is. The checks and balances slow down things, and do add to costs, but the alternative of just letting the government run itself without any oversight at all, which just leads to absolute corruption, which is far more wasteful.
This problem isn't necessarily limited to the US government. Any large corporations suffer from similar ineffiency to certain extent. Most people will put up with government efficiency to a certain extent because they don't want their government to operate like corporations.
The videos of yours I've watched so far have all been very good. I prefer to avoid politics because compared to science and philosophy it's so complicated and people are so emotional. You have a very similar temperament to my own it seems. Neither glass half empty, nor glass half full, but rather the glass is at 50% capacity.
Excellent summary of the big picture but this happens at the smaller local government levels as well. I once had a public works director, as a private consultant, tell me that she wanted her organization to be competitive with private industry. It took me all of about 2 minutes to explain to her just how impossible that was as long as her employees were governed by a separate human resources department, facilities run by a building department, vehicles by a Fleet dept., and so on. She honestly didn't know what those costs were and asked that I dig into it. It some months but I had to eventually report that her employee costs alone were roughly 250% higher than that of a privately run business who could do the same work. It was an eye-opener but sadly got her fired.
Social security doesn’t work well. There is no pile of cash, it’s just debt being taken out by recipients while the current taxpayers have no guarantee. A lot of the people benefitting don’t need social security, either. As you said, the only qualifications are whether you paid in and whether you’re eligible by age. Nothing about your $2M 401k, your investments that can pay you for the rest of your life, etc.
It goes further than that. Power was never supposed to be centralized in the US, that’s the reason why it works so poorly, it was never designed to do what US citizens are asking it to do.
Not the subs! (I love submarines! SUBSAFE baby!) but agree, posting this before I watch the rest, you are 100% correct and some of this stuff is waaaaayyyy too pricy.
Members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, votes in the best interest of the corporations and not for the good of the US. I believe they are interested in voting in favor of the desires of those that supply them with campaign funds and other bennies. This almost always favors corporations, not what the people back home want. Poll after poll show that Congress no longer represents their constituencies. This is a broken government. We need to take the money out of politics and have term limits.
"Why the Government Wastes So Much Money" - The bottom line - **Because we let them**. "We the people" don't have a hard line stance of **really** holding them accountable. That is all.
Did you not watch the video? Part of the inefficiency and thus increased costs is because of the ways government is held accountable, how citizens are able to use the courts to stop or at least slow some project that they don't like, etc etc.
I have to say there is some misconception regarding the military expenditures being wasteful. I'll use the seawolf since you brought it up. The need for a modern navy, to include submarines, did not go away when the cold war ended. The focus shifted to other threats, and new threats are always popping up. Overkill is the entire point. You don't look at what the other side is doing, see that they don't have XYZ capability, and then decide not to have that military capability because of it. If I have that capability and they don't, that is the entire point. And one top of that, friendly states could be enemies tomorrow, and a nation that lacks an ability might gain it, etc. Furthermore, seawolf was not the bank breaker it was claimed to be. The navy later came up with a new design, the Virginia, which was basically the same but appeared to be cheaper. Perception is the key. The Virginia is more or less just as expensive but because it was not perceived as such, the program got off without a hitch. The problem with military expenditures is that the public does not understand them. The F35 program isn't proportionally more expensive than previous aircraft programs, but due to the fact that the public neither understands the history procurement, how it works, or what the real tactical and strategic needs of the military are...it looks bad to many people.
It seems like you don't have room in your philosophy for scaling down military costs as times change. Only maintaining and escalating. Unless I'm misunderstanding. So that's a fundamental disagreement there. If you do acknowledge that we should sometimes scale down spending, then I'd argue that the end of the Cold War was the time to do it, if there ever was a time. But that didn't happen (at least as dramatically as many thought it would). This video at least partially explained why. I've never heard that the Virginia subs cost roughly the same as the Seawolf, and just looked around more and still don't see that. Where are you getting that from? The same with the F35's.
@@realryanchapman I do have room. We scaled down after WW2. But you never scale down generally. You always maintain a ready to go military at all times. So long as humans exist, the potential threat always exists. It's like a police department. You scale up during a time of crisis, but when you scale down there are limits to how far down you scale. I'll go into more detail about the 35 because I have more of it at the top of my head. The 35 looks expensive because it is replacing all legacy fighters and it's the first time cost has been calculated over the lifespan of the jet. Previous programs did not do this. In the past, you had cost calculated just for RnD plus the number of planes. F35 costs are RnD plus the planes, plus the operating costs through like 2050 or something. On top of this, we are buying 1700 or so. That's because they need to replace all the navy jets, and 3 types of air force jet. Comparisons to previous programs don't take this into account. The program also gets run through the mud because many of the program challenges are looked at in a vaccum and not compared to previous programs where the same problems or worse was happening. Furthermore, I'd the number of planes gets cut, the cost goes up. We're down to about 70 million per plane now. If the order gets cut, that price will skyrocket, and the maintenance and operations costs will go up because if you have too few planes it's hard to operate efficiently.
@Apsoy Pike no that's wrong. It gets made in several states excuse the person's involve know that programs that expensive are targets for cuts, no matter how much they are needed. Very few people specialize in military affairs, but everyone thinks they do. And everyone also thinks they know when a program is a waste. Anything with a price tag that large is going to be a target for anyone who wants to claim they are cleaning the monetary swamp or is just anti military in general. The reform movement of the 70s-90s is a good example of this, because it United anti military doves with hawks who had ulterior motives.
@Apsoy Pike but the inducement is caused by knowing that people will make irrational or uninformed cuts. Not because the military is just make arbitrary rubbish so it can make jobs and waste money.
Thanks again for another great video… whether you know it/meant to or not, you made a great case for why free market folks can always say the role of the government should be limited. 🤣🤣🤣. And I think the inverse to your lobby point is that as we give more and more bureaucratic unchecked power to government agencies that are run by people we did not elect, the more these agencies can trample our individuals rights, in a way that we all “tolerate,” because it’s not worth challenging infringement that requires a great deal of effort to exhaust administrative remedies… Before we can get too, a more independent actor. And it’s exactly why I think all these new 30,000 irs agents will spend the bulk of their time extracting tax payments from people that don’t have the means to take challenge the assessment to even the tax court… Yet alone get all the way to the federal court of appeals. Your free rider comment is a very fair one. Hopefully you’ll see I did something about that… Keep up the good work!
This is not at all unique to the US, but applies to basically every liberal democracy. America is perhaps the worst offender, especially w.r.t lobbying (though it does exist in other countries as well) but that is more due to it's size than culture. The US government has such a collosal budget, with so many legislators prone to lobbying, that it is doomed to be wasteful.
Absolutely. Fortunately/Unfortunately for those who took the effort to understand war, money & nature from works like Sun Wu's Art of War, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations & Carl Sagan's Vision of Humanity, s/he/they will realise there exist many who will seek profits/opportunities from this crisis. This may explain why many elites/experts from states like US, China, EU, India, UK, Russia, AU, Brazil, etc. groups like IMF, WHO, UNP, RSF, ICC, WFP, TSB, POG, etc. & firms like Apple, Tencent, Samsung, Nestle, Loreal, Tata, Sony, Siemens, etc. are already making their moves in the cyber/shadow space.
Delighted to see this channel getting bigger, great unbiased (at least, as unbiased as possible) overview of things. Would love to see you on The Jolly Heretic sometime.
In defense of the screw, its likely that the alloy, proprietary nature, and stringent testing requirements for it drove the actual manufacturing price up to near the purchase price. Retooling a shop to make a small batch of specialty screws out of unobtanium, only to send half of them to be destroyed in a lab in every conceivable way to make sure that they can withstand the specific frequencies and forces of a jet engine and flight can easily result in an absurd end price. A modified off the shelf screw from Home Depot made out of pot metal would probably work in most cases, but nobody wants that kind of liability, which itself would probably be the issue.
My uncle did electrical-engineering consulting for the Navy, and he said much the same thing about projects he worked on. Of course, there's still plenty of room for waste and graft -- my own experience in shipbuilding showed me that military contractors are just as inefficient as the government itself, simply because the government is so inefficient and corrupt that it can't possibly police the inefficiency and corruption of its contractors.
@@KatieLHall-fy1hw supply and demand. Fact is the USAF could make most of these parts using CNC / 3d printing , they don't bother. Whereas US army SOCOM types literally have multiple shipping containers (brought in by helo) of portable parts makers (3d printers /CNC again) to repair any weapon they carry in the field
As retired Army Aviation maintenance and flight crew on UH 60 Black Hawk helicopters, you would be shocked that the $123.00 screw is peanuts compared to the cost of the part, sub-assembly, or larger item it is a part of on the helicopter. What the other person said- the metal or alloy that the screw was made from, along with the research and development, testing and then quality control testing of so many screws of each Lot number all lead to the cost of and individual screw.
This is assuming the screws aren't all machined. Hardware isn't always just cast in a mold or made in obscenely fast rates by the specialty machines you see in RUclips manufacturing videos. Aerospace parts and the like are held to high standards and often need to be machined in order to meet them. I work in a tool and die shop, but we also do custom machining work for other businesses' needs. We've done hardware, and even if the material is cheap (it usually isn't) the time it takes to set the machines up, take measurements, and make program cost money. On top of that, the tooling it uses (carbide cutters are NOT cheap) has to be factored in as well. Stainless steel is a mother to cut. Despite being hard, it's also kinda gummy. You need tough tooling to machine it. Not to mention the fact that other parts are usually made out of hardened steels, which means it's cut down to close to the final size (we're talking thousandths of an inch) heat treated, then ground down to the finished dimensions. Grinding takes a LOT of time, as does hard turning and machining. I don't blame people for balking at the price or these parts. Modern fabrication is something we don't talk about a lot, so it's unfair to expect other people to know this stuff. But I feel it's important I add this bit of info to the conversation being had right now. Things aren't as cut and dry when it comes to manufacturing.
I think you did a great job of providing a balanced and non-partisan analysis as well as showing how the structure of the government has both plusses and minuses. It's so rare for such level-headed commentary and I wish we could have more of it.
@thebestasmr2403 Thanks for the response. I was curious as to the effect of R&D but if advertising is on aggregate a greater cost, the cost of R&D would not be able to explain the discrepancy. If you have a source where you got these figures I would be curious to see a cost breakdown but no worries if not, thank you again.
Ironically, as someone from Europe i find the US very *unregulated.* Lots of rules that limit the individual, almost none that protect and secure their rights and services. I perceive Americans as opposed to rules, even if they benefit from the guaranteed assurances. not lobbyists but regular people seem almost allergic to the word "regulation"
Just because there are rules does not mean that those to whom it was meant for will follow them. On the contrary, they will exploit flaws and loopholes, and oftentimes flaunt them outright. This is because the rules are internal to the organization, outsiders do not know them. It is most evident as seen from the innumerable examples of cops who blatantly violate people's constitutional rights even though they have sworn to uphold the constitution. They do so knowing full well that they will not be accountable because of their qualified immunity. Even if they get sued, it is the department that gets sued, then the payout is taken from taxes, not their own pockets or pension.
I see what you're saying in this video but it is flawed in that it is centered around America's uniqueness but America doesn't have a uniquely bad government. Governments worldwide are far more oppressive, incompetent, and wasteful. And those countries have less individual rights or can have more or less trust. As broken as we like to say it is, the American political system has still led to-and continues to maintain-the wealthiest, strongest, and one of the most prosperous and free nations in human history.
I think the argument is that the US does have a uniquely wasteful government, visible in terms of healthcare, infrastructure, etc costs, compared to other democracies
I work for a NASA contractor. The amount of paperwork and certification needed to deliver hardware, even simple low criticality hardware is astonishing. Part of this is the fear of failure, since any failure, no matter how small is scrutinized, criticized and blame is leveraged politically. The failure a something as small as screw at the wrong place at the wrong time can be catastrophic. SpaceX must be far less regulated or controlled, and I envy them. They are allowed to fail, even spectacularly. They can take far more risks. So long as no one dies, they will probably be allowed to continue they way they are. I dread the day they have a "bad day".
There was an interesting video done by economics explained that talked about how they are finding that large generations like the boomers they have the power to make laws that benefit themselves and the boomers when they came into power were far larger than the former population and also came at the richest time. This is something that will affect us far after they are gone. That's just a single example and something that I think would be helpful to look further into. I do like it that people are starting to talk about the flaws in the structure. The USA is the oldest of this type of government and one of our problems is that we think it is something special and don't update our system. Another thing is that we are far more like the EU than a single country. The 13 colonies were all separate cultures with different needs. We are also a melting pot and different cultures have different needs. We have also reached the point where we can get so much done that we can create long term problems.
You said the phrase "long-term" at one point in the video. On that note, I'd argue that a majority of our problems can be tied to an inability to think long-term. Take climate change. The long-term costs and consequences of failing to take action, over the course of decades, is nearly incalculable. However, politicians and corporations choose to ignore it in favor of short-sighted political and economic gains. Same with unnecessary military bases or equipment. In the long-term, it'd be cheaper if we started phasing them out, but it hurt someone's career in the short-term.
You tackled a terribly complex topic and succeeded in giving a clear, unbiased, easy to understand explanation. This is now my favorite of your videos because government waste is so much more enmeshed in the fabric than any other topic I’ve seen you cover. Thank you!
your videos are very good and are filling a much-needed niche on political youtube. there's a noticeable lack of the "in-group signaling" many political youtubers use, which makes your videos come across as much less biased. great stuff. 👌
Thank you to everyone who supports these projects on Patreon. I wouldn't be able to devote so much time and so many resources to one video otherwise. I'm trying to make the best work I can and the donations really do make it possible. If you'd like to chip in and support me, check out www.patreon.com/rchapman. Video notes below.
Notes:
I didn't talk about fraud in this video. Here's the scoop:
We think we lose around 50-70 billion a year from fraud, most of it healthcare fraud. That's significant. But it's easier to measure losses from fraud than losses from inefficiency or from waste related to lobbying and interest groups. It's also the easiest to understand. If the government has a big pot of money and relatively loose security around that pot, people will take advantage and steal some (by claiming disabilities they don't actually have, for example). Increasing security helps solve the problem. I watched a podcast by The Office Of Inspector General that said - as of 2019 - we have 1600 people working for the OIG to 'root out fraud, waste and abuse' related to healthcare. That seems like a low number to me. I also suspect that if we made reforms that made our government more competent and brought more talented people into government, they'd be more motivated to stop fraud and would find more elegant ways to do it.
This video did not go into why governments are more wasteful than private organizations (no profit incentive, not spending their own money). My focus was more specific. I said: given that it is a government (which assumes we're not thinking about privatizing whatever the government is doing), these are aspects of that government, and things that are happening in that society that are causing inefficiency and waste. I considered this a subject that most people do not want to spend long watching (books about budgeting problems, for example, don't exactly fly off the shelves), so I had to made decisions about what to include and what not to include in order to keep the runtime down and reach a broader audience.
It's also worth saying that I didn't mean to imply that other governments around the world aren't wasteful, or that the US has the most wasteful government on the planet. When I said things like 'X makes the government uniquely wasteful,' I meant that the government is highly wasteful in a manner that's distinct to the US. Not that the US is more wasteful than anywhere else. I try to make my phrasing as clear as possible and anticipate how I might be misinterpreted, but I'm still learning.
Another point that I wish I brought up: politicians are also incentivized to be friendly and accommodating towards lobbyists because they (in the last 50 years or so) tend to seek work in the lobbying field once they're out of office, which is called the 'revolving door.' If politicians, while in office, develop friendly relationships with lobbying firms, one would think that would facilitate finding work there upon retirement. Again, there could be a temptation to pass legislation suggested by the lobbying firms that isn't necessarily a good use of money or in the public interest, if it seems like it will give said politician a path to a lucrative career once they're out of office. It's something that's hard to prove, but is regardless widely seen, even within Washington, as a big issue.
One last thing: if you want to do your own research on what I talked about in the second half of this video, I'd suggest looking up 'rent-seeking' and 'the logic of collective action.'
- Ryan
Thats the why the government should institute mandatory corporations and direct the economy
I think at around 14:30 you were trying to point to something on-screen you would put in editing but may have forgot to.
@@olsterman937 Trust me I watch these videos enough times over before I upload them that I wouldn't miss something like that. With my gestures I was trying to say 'on one hand this' and 'on one hand that.'
Great video. I would also add the appropriations process as another reason the government is so wasteful. Basically, every year federal agencies receive an "appropriation," or funding for that fiscal year. The appropriation is then subdivided into catagories with rules stipulating how that money can legally be spent. If an agency fails to spend the entirety of its appropration, they run a high risk of budget cuts the following year. As such, agencies often make purchases simply to spend all the money in its appropration regardless of actual need. For example, say the Veterans Administration is nearing the fiscal year and still has money left in the "furniture" subcatagory of its appropriation, it will buy new furniture to replace furniture that was just purchased the previous year.
Ryan, the problem is, neo-liberals (that's the Republican and most of the Democrat parties) don't want government jobs. Though those jobs would provide decent pay for more people. They want everything privatized. They want our government to be run like a business. A business framework does not work on people. Because corporate business owns our government, they have been running our country like a business for many many years already and all that has done is deregulate protections for the public and allowed regulations for corporations that allow greed, corruption, monopolization, job going overseas, etc.
As a jet engine mechanic for the military, I see this every day, and it's so frustrating.
I accidentally break something while assembling an engine, say I bent the probe of a thermocouple, or scratched the sealing face of a metalic seal. I go to supply to pick up a new part and see that that thermocouple is priced at $1700, or that metal seal is $4000. Also mind you that the engines I'm working on are nearly 50 year old designs, we're not talking about cutting edge stuff. As an amatuer machinist, these are parts that I could replicate for dozens of dollars without the aid of billion dollar factories that military contractors possess.
At the same time, the military can't find the funds to replace lead drinking water pipes on base, or tear down barracks and dormitories riddled with black mold.
It really makes you think about how much further that $773B budget would go if we paid normal prices for things, or how much of that $773B we could save and spend on things like our education or healthcare, or infrastructure. I'm practically in a state desperation at the thought that our government will never accomplish anything noteworthy with these constraints. It has genuinely made me never want to work for the government again after I get out.
Read miles parker's comment,,,
The more hrs we work the greater the tax and there is nothing we can do.
You're perfectly placed to answer this question: my understanding is that people outraged over the cost of a bolt or a screw on a military jet are misunderstanding some of the engineering that can go into said fasteners. For example often they're designed to break or shear in a very specific manner during disintegration. Is there any truth to that which explains some of the cost?
@@edthoreum7625 I made my comment with things in mind like cutting tool cost, material cost, pre/post measurement, post-processing requirements (like surface grinding, annealing, or hardening) and CNC programming time.
Granted, 'dozens of dollars' might have been an understatement, as it didn't really account for my time or expertise. But as one man I could make a profit by charging something in the range of hundreds of dollars for such a part. Because of economies of scale, any manufacturer making that part by the hundreds or thousands (which is not unreasonable considering many of these parts are sold to our allies who operate similar aircraft) is paying substantially less in manufacturing costs per unit. Even when you factor in the procurement cost of equipment and factories, the price of such a part should almost certainly be dirt cheap after a production run of 50 years when all those assets are paid off.
The massive thing I haven't even mentioned is that a lot of these parts are refurbished or recycled from the old ones the military sent back, meaning that the manufacturer eliminates even more of the manufacturing cost.
With all this in mind, I can say with absolute certaintly that the military is overcharged, atleast by aerospace manufacturers.
@@richardpritzel1892 My reply to Ed Thoreum is applicable to your question. Certainly there are factors which justify a bolt on a fighter jet being two, three, even ten times more expensive. For example they might have holes machined in the head for safety wire, or come coated in a high-temperature anti-sieze.
But as someone who works with them every day, it is absolutely ludicrous to see them go for twenty to one hundred times the normal cost for an equivalent bolt.
They seemingly strip, break, melt, and sieze just as easily as any bolt I've ever seen. In fact, I've seen jets that were assembled using non-standard bolts probably from a hardware store that had no problems.
Maybe you could replicate them, but could you, and every other mechanic in the military, replicate them consistently enough that planes don’t fall out of the sky?
Also, could you originate them? Could you design the plane? Because those costs are factored into all of the parts.
R&D, quality control, etc. is always a huge part of the cost of military hardware.
Here is how this worked in practice, when I had a small software company, and we got requests for bids from government agencies: The rules and processes you had to comply with in order to submit your bid and to complete the project once you won the bid were so onerous and cumbersome that we quickly realized that we needed to bid 4-5 times(!) higher prices than we would have done for the same project for a private client. Keep in mind, I am not talking about rules to make the software safer or more useful or equitable, or anything like that. The rules were ONLY designed to allow the agency to prove that they were not overpaying for their software. We had to hire extra people, just to stay on top of the rules process, rather than just write the software. (In reality, this pretty much disqualified all small companies, as large consulting firms like IBM had entire departments on staff, just for these kinds of processes, and since they had no competition, they made it worth their time by hugely overcharging the government clients.)
So, the processes that were set up to ensure governments weren't being overcharged (or gave contracts to their buddies) resulted in the exact opposite; namely that they had to pay multiples of what any other client would pay.
Distrust is EXTREMELY expensive!
All true, but trust is even worse. Take away those processes and 100% of contracts will go to their friends at the highest possible rate, in exchange for the usual hidden kickbacks and future employment etc. The only reasonable solution is to shrink government to the smallest possible size with the fewest possible responsibilities so that the waste is minimized.
@@bobnix3240 evidently not in the rest of the industrialized world.
@@kennethkho7165 No, it's everywhere. Have you seen how corrupt the EU is with contracts?
@@bobnix3240 That's a big false dichotomy you have there friend.
@@lilowhitney8614 Not at all, governments can fall anywhere on the spectrum. We're certainly not the fullest extent of possible rules, we just lean harder that way than most. My point was merely that the rules are there for a reason, and there are many examples around the world of what happens when there are fewer rules.
Ultimately this is about power and corruption, and the corrosive effects of power, both on individuals, and on the sorts of people who will apply for positions of power. The solution remains the same. If you want less corruption, give the government less power to be corrupt with.
Isn't it a wonderful world when someone can come out of nowhere on RUclips and just blow your mind with the clarity and scholarly integrity of their work
Why are people so suprised by this? The scholary info on RUclips has already passed that of, television, the world's universities, approaching print. The only place it falls short is hyper specific hyper high resolution info found in scientific journals. As far as teaching the public it is only rivaled by the printing press, which will soon be decimated in scale if it hadn't already.
Yeah I feel otherwise I'd have to enroll and be like 3 semesters deep in a course to learn this sort of stuff lol
@@THEGODDAMNDINOSAURi think stuff like this should be mandatory in public schools, relatively unbiased and sticking to the facts and when its not it its pretty admitting of it
It’s a pleasure to watch due to the clarity of articulation in your content. And refreshing topics, that actually matter, that don't get media light. Thank you Ryan!
Wait is that actually MrSpherical?
@@gabietrifonov9187 I checked. It is
My father worked at a dry dock once. The part numbers for all the items they used on the ship had different military designations from their civilian counterparts. Some of them were because the military had special requirements that the civilian ones did not, such as a military bulldozer needing to fit a non-standard size battery used by all military vehicles, thus requiring a modified battery compartment and door, different from its civilian counterparts.
But most parts were 1:1 identical, and only had different part numbers because they were painted olive green from the factory, and/or for the sake of keeping everything filed away in the same catalog. A simple fluorescent light-bulb, identical in every way to a civilian light-bulb with the same rating, would cost more than double the price or sometimes more, for no other reason other than it being a military light-bulb.
Because these corporations realize they can scalp as much as they want from the government without the government pushing back
That kind of corruption is a feature not a bug.
Great work again Ryan - in such a polarised world it’s refreshing to see and hear complexity rationalised in such a balanced presentation.
We just need to keep in mind that the polarization is also built into the system.
I grew up near the Argentia US Naval Station in Newfoundland, and when it was decommissioning I remember going with my father for a public liquidation sale of a lot of office furniture. I remember seeing an office chair (which we ended up buying and I used for years) that had a tag on it reading "Not Cost Effective To Repair". There was literally 1 screw loose on one of the arm rests. That always stuck with me.
Good video. The key takeaway for me is that the "checks and balances" portion is creating some inefficiency itself and not reducing it, like it should. One would think that constant oversight by both other agencies and the public would reduce the likelihood that a hotel room costs $3k/night or a submarine costs 5-10x what it should, but it doesn't, specifically because of the rules and regulations imposed on the government itself. For example, the "use it or lose it" rule in budgeting is huge.
I think you mean the "rules and regulations" portion. Democratic checks and balances are intended to create inefficiency in order to prevent people from consolidating power too easily and creating dictatorships.
The checks and balances system isn't supposed to increase efficiency. The checks and balances system is not designed for a sprawling government but a lean one. A more autocratic government is more suitable for a sprawling government.
That constant oversight slows things down and takes effort to carry out thereby increasing spending needed for the same outcome. Checks and balances don't increase efficiency, they decrease it. The question is whether or not that decrease is worth it. If we want to prevent oil spills, cancerous drugs etc and other harmful effects to citizens and consumers, then we accept that inefficiency as the price of that protection.
However if put too many checks and balances on government contracts for example, then that cost may be just too high for our taste so we'd have to accept less oversight and transparency for affordability. It's a balancing act of trade offs. Don't blindly think checks and balances are inherently good or that 100% efficiency for businesses is the aim of the game. They're not.
This might be my favorite video of yours! Thank you. One interesting thing I have heard is a huge waste of money in many government sectors ( primarily military) is how departments will have an allotted budget for a year, and if they perform well without needing to use the whole budget it will get slashed the following year(to be less wasteful).
In a tragedy of the commons scenario the department will of course only think about itself and frivolously spend up to the allotted budget just to ensure they get at least the same budget the following year.
Spot on, Caleb. The government budgeting process has a built in perverse incentive to not economize.
this exactly is the most common thing. I have seen so many expensive things that are not used but just bought to keep the budgets up
Freeman's Mind (which has Ross Scott narrating the thoughts of Gordon Freeman as he goes through the Half Life games) does a great bit on this to explain some of the weird level designs in Half Life 1, basically chalking up the ridiculous areas (like the giant nutcracker room, or the bottomless pit box smashing room) as being attempts to pad out the budget so they get more funding next year.
Better search abroad for monsters to destroy, to justify the budget. Manufacture monsters if necessary.
This is true not only for government but also major corporations. Management makes sure to spend every penny they can because if they don't they will lose it.
That "American taxpayer's lobbying organization", lobbying for efficient spending that would benefit a broader group, actually sounds like an amazing idea and someone should definitely do it - I'd subscribe
@@kaiepstein5331 The exact same joke instantly popped into my head when I read penguin's comment. That isn't to say penguin is wrong, It would be a fantastic organization that I would be happy to support as well, but I'm also honest enough to admit that it won't be me who puts in the ungodly amount of time and effort that would be required to get something like that off the ground.
The organization may be a non profit and crowdsourced, also a little share of the taxes could be assigned to it as a starting point
I moved to Germany and they have an organization that represents taxpayers here "Bund der Steuerzahler" (=taxpayers association). Some nerds are on TV once a year and publish a list of the most absurd government spending/waste. They compare the scope of the problem to previous years and name the government bodies/ministries, who supported those types of deals. It's stuff along the lines of paying 137$ for a screw, that would definitely make it on the list.
The press conference is pretty well visited by news corps and it makes national news every year on that evening. Then, for a week, journalists and late night comedy shows spend their time finding the funniest and dumbest expenses and it definitely comes up when talking to friends on a break, like:
"Did you hear that [insert town name] spent 300,000€ to cut down 12 trees, so that the church tower was visible from the Autobahn, when driving past the town? And that they replanted the trees for another 100,000€ after they had deemed it a mistake due to environmental reasons".
"Yeah man, crazy. In Wuppertal they payed 400,000€ to put five golden benches on a public square...".
Whenever that association makes a public statement on any spending that is supposed to pass soon or that has been decided already, that expense gets a lot of media attention and makes the public opinion more visible, which sometimes prevents the spending.
@@tristanmoller9498 I like that
@@tristanmoller9498 I as a german citizen, and i am really disappointed about the „Bund der Steuerzahler“, because it is dominated not by „normal taxpayers“ but mostly by rich persons from the private economy, which hope to benefit by influencing policy by lobbyist activities and a big reach advantage compared to other organisations. Also the Bund der Steuerzahler doesnt make in depth research on wasteful spending like Chapman has described, remember the sugar industry, but focuses on micro stuff like misplaced railway gates. Generally speaking its a lobby group pretending to work in favor for society.
Another banger video thanks for putting out such quality stuff. I feel spoiled to live in a time when this kind of content is so readily available
Super Brilliant! Thank you for this. Once again, really insightful and interesting.
So basically to oversimplify the whole video:
In an attempt to keep our democracy democratic, we created an inefficient government that creates a bunch of waste.
There are 2 methods the a organization can use to approach a problem:
Method 1: Let the employees use their brains to solve our problems. We may put guidelines in to try to help, but those guidelines are just recommendations. We may also put some rules that the employee can't break, but the employee should still have a lot of control over how they solve this problem. (Ex: Average small and/or midsized restaurant)
Method 2: We will put rules on how to do this thing every step of the way. They can't deviate away from the rules, even if it is more efficient to just deviate from it sometimes. (Ex: McDonalds)
Sometimes it's more efficient to do method 1, sometimes it's more efficient to do method 2.
The majority(AKA the bigger group) doesn't feel like lobbying not despite its large numbers, but due to its large numbers that everyone believes everyone else will go ahead and lobby, and the opposite is true for smaller groups. Due to this the people making the decisions may only be exposed to arguments in favor of the smaller group(Sometimes at the expense of the bigger group), which isn't helped by the fact that the smaller group may already have arguments and counterarguments prepared to support things that favor the smaller group.
Our military is a whole other mess to explain in terms of wastefulness in this video due to our military maintaining state-of-the-art tech. To best explain it, it's by a case-to-case basis.
In an attempt to reduce wastefulness, we support actions that will help increase wastefulness.
Edit: And I just got to the last part of the video, which shows a summary of the video.
He skimmed the part where the bigger group (the low to middle income earners, the 90%) nowadays have less combined disposable income than the smaller group (the rich and super-rich, the 1%) to spend on lobbying, causing a feedback loop leading to less and less government resources being allocated to further the interest of workers, and more and more to furthering the interests of the super-rich.
He also didn't mention how the smaller group not only lobbies government officials, but also lobbies the bigger group itself, as owners of the media, the news media in particular. By the smaller group limiting and directing discourse, the bigger group is convinced not to act in opposition of the smaller group.
I recommend "Inventing Reality" by Michael Parenti - significantly less dry than "Manufacturing Consent", which covers some of the same topics.
@@c99kfm All excellent points. And these principles point inexorably to the importance of education. If one hopes to have any chance of transcending the social caste into which they were born, a solid education is a prerequisite. Higher education does not equate to intelligence, but it can teach skills that are critical not only for the straightforward tasks of obtaining careers in lucrative industries, but more importantly it can teach the language of the game being played. The concept of directing discourse to achieve an objective is happening constantly around us, on numerous levels and in ways which we may or may not notice, depending on the level of sophistication and the degree to which we happen to agree with the intended objective. Which is to say, it is not necessarily nefarious and is in fact often for the benefit of the viewer. But the more you understand the language of business, finance, healthcare, technology, etc, the more capable you become of identifying the subtle abuses of such language, the euphemisms that misleadingly wrap things which are detrimental to public interests in appealing sentiment, the obfuscation of unpleasant truths in unnecessary layers of technical complexity, the manipulation of statistics or blatantly fallacious application of statistical inference, or misdirection of attention through the use of fear- or grievance-based arguments centered on topics that are far less relevant or impactful than the topic being downplayed.
For every instance of this we notice, there are at least a handful we do not notice. We live in a constant riptide of information, and we are all in an ongoing battle to keep our heads above water. These are strange days.
In and attempt to keep our "democracy democratic we". Who exactly is we, for sure we is not you or me. We have allowed a government, which is no longer ours to control, to lead use to believe that it's a democracy when it's is, according to the constitution, suppose to be a constutional republic. The real battle, in the AI world of today, for control is between the global working class and the global ruling class. Unfortunately for the WC the RC are winning this on going seemingly never ending battle for total control. In many ways they have won! One example of how we know they've won is that the writer of this comment firmly believes that this country is a democracy based on being a democratic system that is fundamentally based on what benefits the many and not the rights of the individual!
But Russia, China and EU have same military tech yet they don't spend as much, US military spending being so high is due to price gouging and corruption in the military industrial complex, defence contractors and congressman make a lot of money, I wouldn't be surprised if the actual US military budget is around 300-400 billion.
60 minutes did in an exposé on this
The idea that "special interest" groups have disproportionate effect on policy has a bearing on our debate about individualized free speech. When I speak only for myself, I tend to be less willing to join with others who claim to have grievances -- so it may be harder for legitimate group grievances to get seriously addressed.
I wanted to add the nuance that some of these grievances come from what we call "marginalized groups" that are often recognized legally as "protected classes" (and drive, for example., some of the "hate speech" policies on many tech platforms). So this observation has a much larger meaning on the Left (whose "tribal" political constituencies often were abused or upended in the past -- "critical theory", etc.) than on the Right, whose tribal groupings resist having privileges or assets they had "enjoyed" being taken away from them by political force. So I think this part of the problem complicates Ryan's presentation. Eventually I expect to do a more polished (than usual for me) video on this problem myself.
While I learn rather more Left, I agree in the broad strokes. Special interest groups have a lot of say on all sides there too, and at times (e.g. when bad faith arguments arise with government "tone policing") starts distracting from larger issues.
Free speech is a complicated issue though that I don't think fully fits the comparison to special interest group lobbying in other areas (TL;DR of below, applies only to government not to private entities, which people on all sides sometimes forget. Government can't step in to impose rules on speech without intense scrutiny, for very good reason, like they can with goods and services and regulations). As an aside though, do keep in mind that not siding with others who claim to have grievances (if absolute -- I know you said "less") is siding with a society that wants to remain complacent and unchanging. I can understand wanting to conserve your time and energy to choose your own battles, but people with grievances are the only ones pushed to make a change in society (why bother if you have nothing to gain and everything to lose, yeah?) and making the world better involves people like yourself guiding that change. Equating "legitimate" with "lack of grievances" becomes a very dangerous thought, then, because it assumes there's no level of scrutiny possible to legitimize or "make good" of an effort to change. Staying stagnant forever is a lie of convenience (just not how the world works, and always trending mildly negative) and upholding status quo by not being motivated toward change is just asking for bad actors to step in as authority figures and declare a new "status quo".
(Free speech part)
The scope of free speech protections in the US is limited in the sense that it only binds the government itself in how it can protect or (in very select cases) sidestep the right to free speech. It strongly binds / is imposed on only the government, in most cases unless laws are made which attempt to more broadly enforce or sidestep that (in which cases, those laws are very carefully scrutinized to maintain free speech, of course for very good reason).
For the most part, it binds / imposes very little burden on private entities (individuals, companies running social media platforms, etc.) from setting and enforcing their own rules to allowable speech, also for very good reason. It's not up to the courts to decide what people consider **acceptable** speech, only that which causes abject harm (fighting words, slander, Title IX harrassment, conspiracy to commit a crime)
People on both sides of the debate on "hate speech" commonly confuse this, for example. Aside from the current statutes regarding slander and etc., some """Twitter warriors""" (minority) on the Left who believe the government should step in to criminalize offensive speech are misguided. On the other hand, some """Twitter warriors""" (hopefully minority) on the Right who think free speech gives them a free societal pass to be offensive and hateful without societal consequences are also very mistaken (even in the US court of law, often don't realize that free speech DOES have select few limitations). I hope the importance of the US government not infringing on peoples' free speech here, and how this differs from societal expectations, is obvious.
Like for example, no one's taking away your [I hope generally speaking] freedom to say extremely hateful and offensive things that only moderately harm people, but it can make you a terrible enough person to be around (e.g. actively denying their rights to personhood via speech alone) that no one wants to associate with you. Government or political force isn't what's stepping in there 😅.
By contrast, government can and SHOULD step in where necessary to enforce the necessary rules and regulations on goods and services on private entities, at least to some degree, especially when bidding on / contracting for the government. We don't want all our planes and submarines to sink, our roads and buildings to crumble into dust, our education or healthcare system to become nonexistant, etc. etc. I hope that baseline is obvious too, though, how much government should step in there is a discussion for a different time.
This is perhaps one of the best channels I’ve come across recently. Not only am I going to binge-watch all your videos, but also I’ll be tuning in to your future content!
I worked for a food laboratory that has both US and Canada branch. When I visited our state counterpart, I was shocked on how much they get from government contract. Here in Canada, government gigs don’t really pay well, and they have a lot of audit. In US, they pay nearly double the price without oversight, simply because the lab is “FDA approved”
I've seen a number of your videos and I wanted to thank you for doing such a great job--specifically, for discussing issues in a factual way without perceivable bias, which is a huge virtue. The very fact that I cannot tell where you yourself stand on issues and what your opinions are, is a very huge (and difficult) accomplishment. Blatant bias is what everyone else is doing, so thank you.
I wanted to add something I was told over 20 years ago by a faculty member at the university I went to (FYI it was focused on engineering so many of the instructors and professors had worked in industry)
I was at a cantina shop on campus one night and started talking with another student and a faulty member (different department from my degree). The other student and I both made negative comments about the government paying hundreds of dollars for a hammer (that at a store would have been a few bucks). The faculty member stopped us and asked "do you know why it is that way?" We just blamed corruption, wastefulness, etc. He told us it was badly written contracts. In the contracts, it is highly detailed out, where, how, with what, etc, a part is to be made, assembled with others, the entire production process. The issue is sometimes things like tool kits (for maintenance) or small incidental items are listed as needed to be supplied with, but the contractor/manufacturer can not sub out said item. So now, the aircraft builder has to figure out how to make hammers, screwdrivers, wrenches, etc and buying the tools and dies for making such. (Another side note: my degree and work experience is mechanical engineering/manufacturing) this learning to make something is very costly (especially for limited production runs) and yes, they could hire/buy/liscense knowledge from a tool maker company, but why would they want to educate a potential rival???
So, because of restrictions in the contract, the supplier has to do something they are not set up to do and then do it on a small scale (ie more costly because of failed attempts) the final cost becomes ridiculously stupid.
Long story short, the government is giving contracts to companies not qualified to carry them out.
Thanks! I very much appreciate your factual, neutral, explanation of complex subjects.
When I worked for the USN I saw some serious money wasting. One example was seeing an aircraft flying around doing touch an goes. I asked a guy next to me if someone needed to get some training or seat time in. No he said, they are burning off fuel so their fuel allotment would not get cut next month. Let's not forget the added wear and tear on the engines and airframe which has major costs as well.
Another was when a coworker was telling me about an avionics upgrade that the Navy brass and operators did not even want, but was told by congress to do it anyway. We're talking about several million per aircraft. I'm sure the equipment supplier contributes to their congressman, heavily.
Then there is how my spouse had stint in the University of California system and how a project that might take 6 weeks in the private sector would take 6 months at US. Not because of any particular process requirement, but that there was no particular urgency to actually get anything done, and zero consequence for not doing so. In fact there were staff that seemed intent on slowing the process down. Maybe you would like to hear that there are multiple IT departments running incompatible software. Or simply that there were people who seemed to have no function other than occasionally go to meetings which resulted in nothing (see above) other than to fill up the day so they could collect a paycheck. In conclusion, we surmised it was nothing more than a welfare system for UC graduates (90+%) who probably would be making lattes for a living at nowhere near their government salary.
That sounds like the planned economy of a communist country.
Wow, that was so helpful to learn. And so well researched, thought out, and broken down. Thank you.
I live in Denmark, where we have what people might call 'big government' (welfare, somewhat more state interferrence). But often, when I or someone I know interact with the US government, we are surprised by just how much bureaucracy is involved, even compared to the Danish government.
Somehow, the US has managed to create a large 'small government'...
People scream about "small government" in America, PRECISELY because the federal government is so big. And has the potential (and many would say an interest) in growing even bigger. It's not that *everyone* wants small government here (evidently they don't), it's just that your notion as a foreigner of what it means to be American is about demanding small government.
The animosity towards government began with organized labor and civil rights movements in the US :
Because the danish government works for the people not for massive corporations...
There's some downsides to being the richest country in the world
Underrated video. It-s not often a youtube channel would provide you with an insight that was never obvious to you, even though it's rather simple and clear in its reasoning. Yet you seem to be able to do it with almost every video.
It would be interesting to compare some "efficient" governments to the US. Singapore is probably the best example.
_"Why is the government so wasteful?"_
Because it's easy to be wasteful when you personally suffer no consequences and you're expending other people's resources.
Taxation is theft, and government is a racket.
One other aspect to consider is the multiple levels of government. Going back to infrastructure. Let's say there's a bridge in disrepair. That is not part of a federal or state highway system. The local government says it doesn't have the money. It's more advantageous for the local government to wait on repairs until it's an emergency so they can then petition the state or the federal government.
You’re one of the good standards for educational RUclips channels 👍
Yes but a lot of people who watches political videos don't want to be educated, they want their ideas reinforced; they want to watch videos that agree with their opinions, their ideas, their ideologies, their beliefs only.
Just remember WHO is getting this 'waste'. This 'waste' goes to mostly really BIG government contractors and private medical agglomerations. They are the happy recipients of this 'waste'.
I work for the government and I see the inefficiencies, as well as the long process of bickering between different departments and agencies. As well the long procedures and paperwork we have to follow just to get something done or receive money to do it. The US government is basically a constant ongoing negotiating struggle just like a bar fight that only ends once people either tireds out and gives up or we just forget about what our original goal was and hope it resolves itself. Usually doesn't. Lol.
The answer is much simpler than he states.
**You'll always spend other people's money with less concern than you will spend your own.**
That's it.
The farther removed the money is from the person directly responsible for earning it, they less people will care. And maliciousness can leak in easier as well, but even assuming people were all angels, you just have no clue what it took to get that money as the earner vs the need for what it's being spent on. So the best someone could do is some very VERY bad guesses.
This is fantastic. Thank you for existing.
Our biggest problem is we don’t make it easy to be pull back laws and programs if the President and Congress have the power too. It should be like a ratchet. Fast and easy to unwind but slow to add too.
I love how nonpartisan this content is. You’re crushing it sir.
IT IS VERY PARTISAN DON'T BUY IT, homeboys a right wing operative.
Nonpartisan? Only one party is against waste, while the other party believes waste is beneficial because it pushes wages up.
@@theBear89451
Really? Examples please.
@@theBear89451 There is no party that is "pro-waste" and advocating that we be more wasteful. The only two positions on government waste are either indifference or anti-wastefulness. No rational actor would ever push for more waste because it pushes up wages. Dunno where you heard this, but it's clearly absurd.
You should spend less time listening to what politicians are telling you they are trying to do (Republicans, for example, always saying they're trying to stop wastefulness - it's bullshit, of course, they're just giving the money to different special interests than the other guys), and more time watching what they're actually doing. Both parties let themselves be lobbied by special interests. Both parties sneak ear marks and pork barrel spending into bills. You seem to have missed the entire message of this video, which is that the system and the shape we as a society have forced it into encourages the wrong behavior for the outcomes that we expected. We want government to work for all Americans, but we only incentivize it to work for small, individual interest over our broader social and national interest. It's possible to go too far in the other direction, of course, and to start damaging individual interest and freedom for the sake of the state (Soviet Russia, anyone?). But it's a balancing act that we are not very good at.
@@theBear89451 No adult should actually believe this.
Ty Ron, good vid.
My addtion to that "inefficient goverment dilemma" is that there is no (financial) incentive for the politicians to make government less wasteful.
On the contrary, from the perspective of a peoples representative (aka politicians) there is every incentive to overspent, over budget. Not only does this raise the chances of reelection but also give them personally a good shot after time their government time to work for these companies for whom the lobbying was done, or give (nonsense) speeches for what they get each time 6-figures paid.
My suggestion would be to give each politician a profit share of 20% of the surplus in his or her budget. So if they manage to spend less than they take in they get paid.
But if they overspent, well then they pay 20% out of their personal pocket.
Then we as the people could start trust our repreentatives again, because there would be a strong incentive to spent the money wisely, or even better to not spent it at all.
Another important factor is that the social rebalancing (taking from the rich and giving it to the poor like social security) is part of the budget. And are not separated from rest of spending, sadly.
People beeing afraid loosing out on some social payments let politicians get away with wasteful spending in other areas. So it is better to have two separate budgets (Social and everything else).
By seperating those two, and financing social rebalancing by a seperate wealth duty, people would put more pressure on the politicians to reduce wasteful spending, because they know that this would not effect the social rebalancing.
Just my two cents here ....
Keep your good work, ty again.
Thanks Ryan Chapman, I really appreciate videos like this that take an extremely critical look into politics and pulls back the alluring veil of partisanship to reveal the complex reality of how the world works.
If more people understood how and why government spending can become so wasteful, I wonder if the political discussions and issues would be different? I don’t know about most folks but I think one of the biggest issues that we actually face as a nation is whether or not we should abolish lobbying.
The US government originally created was very efficient at doing what it was supposed to do: stay out of the way of the people. As history shows, many institutions like healthcare or education, and even public works, worked very well before the federal government was expanded to take control of them from local governments and the people. So, it is not that we created a government that is inefficient; it's that with the years we have allowed the government to bloat into a sticky mess that now infects every tiny aspect of everything and everyone. What we have now is not the government that was intended, but a corrupted and perverse disfiguration of it.
Another great video, Ryan. Discovered you yesterday, and now I’m bingeing while the grass doesn’t get mowed. I watched Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation live, as a kid, on a tiny black and white TV. He warned Americans about the military industrial complex. I never forgot that. Here was the outgoing President, a retired war time general, warning us about something big. I thought, “this cannot be good. I’ll see how this pans out.” Spoiler alert: it has not panned out well at all.
Consultants are a big problem. My father is on the state school board and according to him there are some many groups that get a piece of the pie before it even gets dispersed to the actual schools.
This is really great content! Thank you for putting so much work into it.
While the government is studying the environmental impact of repaving the roads, i hit a pot hole, bent my wheel, my tire is not fixable, so 4 tires, a wheel, and an alignment later, theres still potholes
Distrust of the government is not unwarranted.
As I see it, Americans don’t distrust the government nearly enough.
@@artugert moreso that they don't do anything about it but complain
The difference in private industry is that we have less public oversight any time we clown around. Sometimes outsiders confuse their lack of insight as simple end users with efficiency.
You can create a job for your useless cousin, sneak in a consultant. A lot of stuff the public would see as corruption and waste elsewhere.
More rules does not equal better results
I think a big part of the problem is that there is a disconnect between how the government is designed to function and how our political system functions. In the quote from James Madison that you used, he was talking about separation of powers and also federalism which the United States is absolutely designed with a lot of. However, if you listen to politicians, especially presidential candidates, they speak as though these government boundaries don’t exist. Then, when they get into power they have to work within the boundaries and their proposals don’t work. The solution is for Americans to stop focusing on Congress and start focusing on the Statehouse.
As far as the very first question in the video, I worked with an engineer at my job a few years ago who previously worked for NASA on various classified projects. He told me that the reason for the 900 dollar hammers and 5000 dollar toilet seats is essentially because government agencies list those items in place of components used for sensitive projects on spreadsheets. It's basically a legalized form of money laundering.
I thought parts of the military and intelligence budget was black. It is a budget post but there is no accounting for where it goes. It's a lump of cash where the lawmakers do not openly debate, or are not privy to, any details.
The lack of oversight when something is classified is a whole other deal.
US federal government is slow by design, but it shouldn’t be inefficient. If the government is too inefficient at a task, one must ask why that task is given specifically to the government, and if it should be in the government’s hands, then how do they distribute it to the state and local level and minimize corruption with the private sector?
But one must also be weary of micromanagement by any sector, because micromanagement, especially by non-engineers such as politicians, is a major source of inefficiency. Having worked multiple engineering jobs by this point, know the difference can be staggering
Really appreciate your videos Ryan, keep going!
Sugar industry in the US is $12B, but it causes insulin resistance that causes heart disease that feeds the $14B statin industry.
This is a great, albeit depressing, video. I'm forced to wonder if there is any way we can make the government work a little more smoothly and efficiently without overly compromising our democratic values and process.
Sure! The first step, I think, is to acknowledge it will never be perfect. We will have mistakes, we will have errors in judgment. We want to minimize but accept we won't end waste.
The second, I think, is having strong advocates for accountability. Is it a taxpayer advocacy group (As he alluded to in the video)? Is it more government inspectors general who have strong power to investigate fraud, waste and abuse? Is it more subsidies to local news organizations that aren't part of big entertainment conglomerates so we can shine a bright light on waste when it happens?
Any of those would help and I bet there are even better ideas out there.
Have you ever questioned democracy? Rule of the masses. They're idiots!
One way would be to step down from being the world's police,, but that may incite a host of other problems.
@@x--. a tax payer advocacy group. Jesus Christ. You mean like...people you vote for???? He really beat around the fundamental problem so it's not surprising to see this. The problem is bribery of elected officials through campaign donations or later lobbying jobs. Any new entity group you create will be crushed under the billions of dollars of wasted money you went looking for as those interest groups oppose you with bribes. That will never reduce government inefficiency because the money doesn't disappear, it's collected by corporations that directly benefit from and actively push for it.
The inefficiency literally comes from government attempting to provide public services while also serving The Market.
creating a master AI to calculate for free according to the amendements instead of corrupt lawyers 😂
The whole point of socialism was to democratize the economy. Basically, ignore market forces and replace them with a political process that controls the economy instead. It didn't work for the exact same reasons as you describe here. Democratization is not always a benefit and it might be overvalued in the west today.
Thanks!
I mean, $137 isnt too incredibly unreasonable for a screw if it's made of Ti and machined to incredibly tight tolerances.
and it's for a old plane that you no longer keep parts around for. and the Air Force ran out of parts for decades ago. =True Story.
Also the tools that work on the assumed Ti screw must be Cadmium free. Cadmium can scratch Ti and start a stress fracture. So that is where you get the $700 wrench due to adhering to milspec.
Plus the military likes to place orders for things that haven’t been made in 20 years, which makes their contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors have to reinvent the wheel.
Point #2 is why one of my favorite current campaign promises is "I'm going to veto every legislation that doesn't get rid of ten old regulations for every new regulation it proposes."
There's one critical component to the dysfunction of our system that this video fails to mention.
The Polarization of our society.
When the people of a country hate each other so much- they tend to elect politicians who won't cooperate with the other side under any circumstances even on Issues that everybody agrees on... what this means is that one party needs to control all 3 branches of the government if it wants to get anything done, and since that's usually not the case- things usually don't get done.
My theory is that the government has no need for money and does whatever it wants. With everything going digital who’s to say how much those in power have to spend anyway. It could all be created out of thin air and explained to us as wasteful spending. Sometimes I feel our taxes are a form of social control to keep us bounded by the economic struggles in our lives all the while a secret agenda is being pushed to transform society.
They should spend taxpayer money on fighting climate change, improving our country, and military defense, not on CRT or wokeness.
Have you looked at our military budget? The highest in the supposedly free world. Meanwhile we’re consistently told that there is no money to help the people actually living in this country. The best defense is to have a happy healthy population, not how many bombs we can drop on innocent people in other countries.
Something I want to add to this discussion is that one of government's unique characteristics, in contrast with both private companies and individuals, is that there is no profit motive or a bottom line to consider. Ordinary people have to contend with the consequences of debt and potential bankruptcy, whereas government has no hard-defined limit to its borrowing and spending, thereby reducing the incentive to bargain for better prices, even when you factor out the influence of lobbying. The only drawback from a congressman's perspective is the electoral fallout that may occur in the distant future as a result of wasteful spending (like inflation for example), but human beings tend to act in favor of the short-term rather planning for a theoretical future that's still a ways out.
One thing to consider with small items is the cost to the supplier to provide the paperwork required to conform to all the regulations. It might cost few hundred dollars to respond to a request for tender. If a company wins one in ten it then needs to recoup a few thousand dollars on the winning bid. If the request is for 10 hammers youre now looking at 100s of dollars per hammer. If someone had just walked into the store to purchase then they could obtain a much cheaper price.
Ryan, I originally came across your video about fascism and I am so happy I clicked on it! Over the last week I have now consumed almost all of your content. I truly love these dives into our past and clarification of these political and economic and social terms. I feel like I just took a collage course, with a high degree of value. I truly thank you for your work and look forward to following what else you cover.
Hey Ryan, I was just curious why you removed your video on when life began. I thought it was given in a clear and objective, and as you suggested can move the debate on abortion forward. Big fan of your work.
I am European, from Malta, and our model is the complete opposite of the American system. Our politicians do not face any regulation, any democratic restriction, and are free to act as they please without possible fallout. The result is unprecedented corruption and special favors-we even had bureaucrats give unworthy people social benefit schemes (from taxpayer money) to win over their vote. It is chaos. The only solution, as I see it, is not reverting to the American system, but privatizing public/social works as much as possible to leave government out of it.
You just get an oligarchy, which is exactly what the US is - ruled by corporations and oligarchs, who never have the public's best interests, and only answer to their greed.
It's been discussed in other comments here, but I want add to it to drive the point a little further home.
With regards to the military spending obscene amounts of money for screws (and other hardware and tools), it's possible that there's actually a good reason.
Military and aerospace applications are very specific. A bolt for an airplane could easily cost $10,000 depending on the material it's made of, the cutting tools used to make it, the type of hardening or annealing needed, the setup and measuring that takes place before and after machining, the software used to make the CNC program, the machine used for fabrication, the time and talent of the machinist, and more. Modern manufacturing is neither simple, nor cheap. That's because it's very demanding. If what the military is buying for these projects are simple things you can find at a hardware store, then yes, we have a case of both price gouging and reckless spending. I'd be willing to bet though that most, if not all, the hardware needed for military weapons' primary functions and such are custom made to meet tight tolerances and specifications, as well as work in extreme circumstances. If we want to cut down on costs regarding manufactured parts, then one could argue for less strict regulations and standards, but for things like weapon systems and vehicles, that could be disastrous.
And, just in case it comes up, I am a machinist. This is what I do for a living. For full disclosure, I don't work with aerospace or military projects, but the considerations, planning, and processes are the same. The only difference is the standard of quality required by the industry and customer (in this case, the military). There's a lot that goes on behind the scenes that people don't know about.
Read Benjamin marshall's comment,,,
Thank you for the great video. I love the position of articulating arguments based on research and facts rather than emotional sensibilities.
If we *REALLY* distrusted government, we wouldn't demand it do so many things in the first place. The problem is that there is a big enough portion of the population that *does* trust the government (at least when their preferred candidates are in in the majority), they are the ones who constantly push for government to do more things, even though the rest of us don't want that. But the people who don't trust government aren't nearly as motivated to demand it be rolled back as are those who want to see it expanded. So it only ever grows, even if in fits and starts.
Pretty accurate assessment.
Yeah, the logic of 'We don't trust our Government enough, if we did, then it wouldn't be so wasteful!' is honestly hilarious as to how naïve it is. The checks and balances slow down things, and do add to costs, but the alternative of just letting the government run itself without any oversight at all, which just leads to absolute corruption, which is far more wasteful.
Nobody is Really motivated at all to roll it back. That is why the debt is the way it is
This problem isn't necessarily limited to the US government. Any large corporations suffer from similar ineffiency to certain extent. Most people will put up with government efficiency to a certain extent because they don't want their government to operate like corporations.
The videos of yours I've watched so far have all been very good. I prefer to avoid politics because compared to science and philosophy it's so complicated and people are so emotional.
You have a very similar temperament to my own it seems. Neither glass half empty, nor glass half full, but rather the glass is at 50% capacity.
Excellent summary of the big picture but this happens at the smaller local government levels as well. I once had a public works director, as a private consultant, tell me that she wanted her organization to be competitive with private industry. It took me all of about 2 minutes to explain to her just how impossible that was as long as her employees were governed by a separate human resources department, facilities run by a building department, vehicles by a Fleet dept., and so on. She honestly didn't know what those costs were and asked that I dig into it. It some months but I had to eventually report that her employee costs alone were roughly 250% higher than that of a privately run business who could do the same work. It was an eye-opener but sadly got her fired.
If you can’t easily solve an issue, just solve the person who raises the issue. 😂😢
I don’t think that separation of powers is a waste
We don’t see the cost if it would not exist
Social security doesn’t work well. There is no pile of cash, it’s just debt being taken out by recipients while the current taxpayers have no guarantee. A lot of the people benefitting don’t need social security, either. As you said, the only qualifications are whether you paid in and whether you’re eligible by age. Nothing about your $2M 401k, your investments that can pay you for the rest of your life, etc.
LET'S GO!!!
I disagree, nothing just, 'can't be'!
It goes further than that. Power was never supposed to be centralized in the US, that’s the reason why it works so poorly, it was never designed to do what US citizens are asking it to do.
Not the subs! (I love submarines! SUBSAFE baby!) but agree, posting this before I watch the rest, you are 100% correct and some of this stuff is waaaaayyyy too pricy.
Finished, GREAT video
Members of Congress, both Democratic and Republican, votes in the best interest of the corporations and not for the good of the US. I believe they are interested in voting in favor of the desires of those that supply them with campaign funds and other bennies. This almost always favors corporations, not what the people back home want. Poll after poll show that Congress no longer represents their constituencies. This is a broken government. We need to take the money out of politics and have term limits.
"Why the Government Wastes So Much Money" - The bottom line - **Because we let them**. "We the people" don't have a hard line stance of **really** holding them accountable. That is all.
I would say that another wording that may be more correct is **Because we make them**
Did you not watch the video? Part of the inefficiency and thus increased costs is because of the ways government is held accountable, how citizens are able to use the courts to stop or at least slow some project that they don't like, etc etc.
It depends if you are up for demanding that your congressman shuts down the local Lockheed plant.
Great summary/essay. You showed your source material; that's awesome. Thank you for putting the work in on this video!
I have to say there is some misconception regarding the military expenditures being wasteful. I'll use the seawolf since you brought it up. The need for a modern navy, to include submarines, did not go away when the cold war ended. The focus shifted to other threats, and new threats are always popping up. Overkill is the entire point. You don't look at what the other side is doing, see that they don't have XYZ capability, and then decide not to have that military capability because of it. If I have that capability and they don't, that is the entire point. And one top of that, friendly states could be enemies tomorrow, and a nation that lacks an ability might gain it, etc. Furthermore, seawolf was not the bank breaker it was claimed to be. The navy later came up with a new design, the Virginia, which was basically the same but appeared to be cheaper. Perception is the key. The Virginia is more or less just as expensive but because it was not perceived as such, the program got off without a hitch. The problem with military expenditures is that the public does not understand them. The F35 program isn't proportionally more expensive than previous aircraft programs, but due to the fact that the public neither understands the history procurement, how it works, or what the real tactical and strategic needs of the military are...it looks bad to many people.
@Apsoy Pike generally because someone wants to reduce funding for misinformed reasons.
It seems like you don't have room in your philosophy for scaling down military costs as times change. Only maintaining and escalating. Unless I'm misunderstanding. So that's a fundamental disagreement there. If you do acknowledge that we should sometimes scale down spending, then I'd argue that the end of the Cold War was the time to do it, if there ever was a time. But that didn't happen (at least as dramatically as many thought it would). This video at least partially explained why.
I've never heard that the Virginia subs cost roughly the same as the Seawolf, and just looked around more and still don't see that. Where are you getting that from? The same with the F35's.
@@realryanchapman I do have room. We scaled down after WW2. But you never scale down generally. You always maintain a ready to go military at all times. So long as humans exist, the potential threat always exists. It's like a police department. You scale up during a time of crisis, but when you scale down there are limits to how far down you scale.
I'll go into more detail about the 35 because I have more of it at the top of my head. The 35 looks expensive because it is replacing all legacy fighters and it's the first time cost has been calculated over the lifespan of the jet. Previous programs did not do this. In the past, you had cost calculated just for RnD plus the number of planes. F35 costs are RnD plus the planes, plus the operating costs through like 2050 or something. On top of this, we are buying 1700 or so. That's because they need to replace all the navy jets, and 3 types of air force jet. Comparisons to previous programs don't take this into account. The program also gets run through the mud because many of the program challenges are looked at in a vaccum and not compared to previous programs where the same problems or worse was happening. Furthermore, I'd the number of planes gets cut, the cost goes up. We're down to about 70 million per plane now. If the order gets cut, that price will skyrocket, and the maintenance and operations costs will go up because if you have too few planes it's hard to operate efficiently.
@Apsoy Pike no that's wrong. It gets made in several states excuse the person's involve know that programs that expensive are targets for cuts, no matter how much they are needed. Very few people specialize in military affairs, but everyone thinks they do. And everyone also thinks they know when a program is a waste. Anything with a price tag that large is going to be a target for anyone who wants to claim they are cleaning the monetary swamp or is just anti military in general. The reform movement of the 70s-90s is a good example of this, because it United anti military doves with hawks who had ulterior motives.
@Apsoy Pike but the inducement is caused by knowing that people will make irrational or uninformed cuts. Not because the military is just make arbitrary rubbish so it can make jobs and waste money.
Thanks again for another great video… whether you know it/meant to or not, you made a great case for why free market folks can always say the role of the government should be limited. 🤣🤣🤣.
And I think the inverse to your lobby point is that as we give more and more bureaucratic unchecked power to government agencies that are run by people we did not elect, the more these agencies can trample our individuals rights, in a way that we all “tolerate,” because it’s not worth challenging infringement that requires a great deal of effort to exhaust administrative remedies… Before we can get too, a more independent actor. And it’s exactly why I think all these new 30,000 irs agents will spend the bulk of their time extracting tax payments from people that don’t have the means to take challenge the assessment to even the tax court… Yet alone get all the way to the federal court of appeals.
Your free rider comment is a very fair one. Hopefully you’ll see I did something about that…
Keep up the good work!
A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury.
A democracy will continue to exist until the majority voluntarily hands over their power to a demagogue.
Social security in practice is just old people voting themselves trillions of dollars.
We have too many government agencies. It's not that our government is inefficient it's too bloated.
Where is there efficient government?
In private startups before they transfer ownership to a corporate board.
In small countries that truly have the public interest at heart
Your videos are amazingly well made. I really appreciate how fact and research based your contents are. Keep it up, and thank you Ryan!
This is not at all unique to the US, but applies to basically every liberal democracy. America is perhaps the worst offender, especially w.r.t lobbying (though it does exist in other countries as well) but that is more due to it's size than culture.
The US government has such a collosal budget, with so many legislators prone to lobbying, that it is doomed to be wasteful.
Absolutely. Fortunately/Unfortunately for those who took the effort to understand war, money & nature from works like Sun Wu's Art of War, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations & Carl Sagan's Vision of Humanity, s/he/they will realise there exist many who will seek profits/opportunities from this crisis. This may explain why many elites/experts from states like US, China, EU, India, UK, Russia, AU, Brazil, etc. groups like IMF, WHO, UNP, RSF, ICC, WFP, TSB, POG, etc. & firms like Apple, Tencent, Samsung, Nestle, Loreal, Tata, Sony, Siemens, etc. are already making their moves in the cyber/shadow space.
I think the US also has a unique combination of centralisation and de-centralisation features baked into it's system that exacerbate it.
Delighted to see this channel getting bigger, great unbiased (at least, as unbiased as possible) overview of things. Would love to see you on The Jolly Heretic sometime.
Great video once again!
I suggest making a video about Judith Butler's theory of gender and its influences
One word: corruption.
In defense of the screw, its likely that the alloy, proprietary nature, and stringent testing requirements for it drove the actual manufacturing price up to near the purchase price.
Retooling a shop to make a small batch of specialty screws out of unobtanium, only to send half of them to be destroyed in a lab in every conceivable way to make sure that they can withstand the specific frequencies and forces of a jet engine and flight can easily result in an absurd end price.
A modified off the shelf screw from Home Depot made out of pot metal would probably work in most cases, but nobody wants that kind of liability, which itself would probably be the issue.
My uncle did electrical-engineering consulting for the Navy, and he said much the same thing about projects he worked on.
Of course, there's still plenty of room for waste and graft -- my own experience in shipbuilding showed me that military contractors are just as inefficient as the government itself, simply because the government is so inefficient and corrupt that it can't possibly police the inefficiency and corruption of its contractors.
I’m sure all of this is true. But companies still increase the price more than they need to. Comes down to profits I think
@@KatieLHall-fy1hw supply and demand. Fact is the USAF could make most of these parts using CNC / 3d printing , they don't bother. Whereas US army SOCOM types literally have multiple shipping containers (brought in by helo) of portable parts makers (3d printers /CNC again) to repair any weapon they carry in the field
As retired Army Aviation maintenance and flight crew on UH 60 Black Hawk helicopters, you would be shocked that the $123.00 screw is peanuts compared to the cost of the part, sub-assembly, or larger item it is a part of on the helicopter.
What the other person said- the metal or alloy that the screw was made from, along with the research and development, testing and then quality control testing of so many screws of each Lot number all lead to the cost of and individual screw.
This is assuming the screws aren't all machined. Hardware isn't always just cast in a mold or made in obscenely fast rates by the specialty machines you see in RUclips manufacturing videos. Aerospace parts and the like are held to high standards and often need to be machined in order to meet them.
I work in a tool and die shop, but we also do custom machining work for other businesses' needs. We've done hardware, and even if the material is cheap (it usually isn't) the time it takes to set the machines up, take measurements, and make program cost money. On top of that, the tooling it uses (carbide cutters are NOT cheap) has to be factored in as well. Stainless steel is a mother to cut. Despite being hard, it's also kinda gummy. You need tough tooling to machine it. Not to mention the fact that other parts are usually made out of hardened steels, which means it's cut down to close to the final size (we're talking thousandths of an inch) heat treated, then ground down to the finished dimensions. Grinding takes a LOT of time, as does hard turning and machining.
I don't blame people for balking at the price or these parts. Modern fabrication is something we don't talk about a lot, so it's unfair to expect other people to know this stuff. But I feel it's important I add this bit of info to the conversation being had right now. Things aren't as cut and dry when it comes to manufacturing.
I think you did a great job of providing a balanced and non-partisan analysis as well as showing how the structure of the government has both plusses and minuses. It's so rare for such level-headed commentary and I wish we could have more of it.
Hey Ryan, I was wondering if you factored R&D to the cost of healthcare in the United States. Great video!!!
@thebestasmr2403 Thanks for the response. I was curious as to the effect of R&D but if advertising is on aggregate a greater cost, the cost of R&D would not be able to explain the discrepancy. If you have a source where you got these figures I would be curious to see a cost breakdown but no worries if not, thank you again.
Your video blew me away. Corruption/fraud is the variable about how well centralized power works.
Ironically, as someone from Europe i find the US very *unregulated.* Lots of rules that limit the individual, almost none that protect and secure their rights and services. I perceive Americans as opposed to rules, even if they benefit from the guaranteed assurances. not lobbyists but regular people seem almost allergic to the word "regulation"
It’s called the Military Industrial Complex
Liberalism + capitalism + corporatism is the worst combination you could implement in a nation.
Just because there are rules does not mean that those to whom it was meant for will follow them. On the contrary, they will exploit flaws and loopholes, and oftentimes flaunt them outright.
This is because the rules are internal to the organization, outsiders do not know them. It is most evident as seen from the innumerable examples of cops who blatantly violate people's constitutional rights even though they have sworn to uphold the constitution. They do so knowing full well that they will not be accountable because of their qualified immunity. Even if they get sued, it is the department that gets sued, then the payout is taken from taxes, not their own pockets or pension.
Their pockets are filled with stolen taxes what are you legitimately on about?
I see what you're saying in this video but it is flawed in that it is centered around America's uniqueness but America doesn't have a uniquely bad government. Governments worldwide are far more oppressive, incompetent, and wasteful. And those countries have less individual rights or can have more or less trust. As broken as we like to say it is, the American political system has still led to-and continues to maintain-the wealthiest, strongest, and one of the most prosperous and free nations in human history.
He makes some good points though, on what America values. But you are right. America is pretty unique and is still an experiment in many ways!
I think the argument is that the US does have a uniquely wasteful government, visible in terms of healthcare, infrastructure, etc costs, compared to other democracies
I work for a NASA contractor. The amount of paperwork and certification needed to deliver hardware, even simple low criticality hardware is astonishing. Part of this is the fear of failure, since any failure, no matter how small is scrutinized, criticized and blame is leveraged politically. The failure a something as small as screw at the wrong place at the wrong time can be catastrophic. SpaceX must be far less regulated or controlled, and I envy them. They are allowed to fail, even spectacularly. They can take far more risks. So long as no one dies, they will probably be allowed to continue they way they are. I dread the day they have a "bad day".
There was an interesting video done by economics explained that talked about how they are finding that large generations like the boomers they have the power to make laws that benefit themselves and the boomers when they came into power were far larger than the former population and also came at the richest time. This is something that will affect us far after they are gone.
That's just a single example and something that I think would be helpful to look further into. I do like it that people are starting to talk about the flaws in the structure. The USA is the oldest of this type of government and one of our problems is that we think it is something special and don't update our system. Another thing is that we are far more like the EU than a single country. The 13 colonies were all separate cultures with different needs. We are also a melting pot and different cultures have different needs. We have also reached the point where we can get so much done that we can create long term problems.
I think if states were able to govern themselves more rather than the federal government that would help efficiency as well.
You said the phrase "long-term" at one point in the video. On that note, I'd argue that a majority of our problems can be tied to an inability to think long-term. Take climate change. The long-term costs and consequences of failing to take action, over the course of decades, is nearly incalculable. However, politicians and corporations choose to ignore it in favor of short-sighted political and economic gains.
Same with unnecessary military bases or equipment. In the long-term, it'd be cheaper if we started phasing them out, but it hurt someone's career in the short-term.
You tackled a terribly complex topic and succeeded in giving a clear, unbiased, easy to understand explanation. This is now my favorite of your videos because government waste is so much more enmeshed in the fabric than any other topic I’ve seen you cover. Thank you!
I don’t want to give half my cheque to the government.
your videos are very good and are filling a much-needed niche on political youtube. there's a noticeable lack of the "in-group signaling" many political youtubers use, which makes your videos come across as much less biased. great stuff. 👌