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Comment by unixfg | Hacker News Reader

Wait, what kinda of acid and how much? $400,000 seems like a lot.

Exactly. The real question is - why do the chemicals cost $400,000? This seems to be a recurring theme with U.S. expenditure - particularly within the defense sector. When you get nearly blank checks from the government it’s not uncommon for items to be “marked up” so to speak and the difference pocketed by the vendors. Granted, this kind of stuff is pervasive across all sectors/layers.

“[A] McKinsey “business analyst”—someone with an undergraduate degree and no experience—lent to the government priced out at $56,707/week, or $2,948,764/year.”

Why did you have to bring politics into this (Buttlegug)?

You can throw shade at a consultancy without necessarily referring to one of their alumni. McKinsey was a major player in the field long before Buttigieg was an ultrasound.

> $56,707/week, or $2,948,764/year.

I picked the wrong job.

they are paid a pittance of a salary compared to their charged. McKensey is pocketing the difference.

It also goes back into wining and dining the very clients they are charging, and otherwise bribing whoever they need to get the work.

The amount of red tape involved in working with the government- especially anything related to defense- is astounding. I previously worked with a start up whose contacts in the military genuinely wanted to buy our services, but the process to do so was so long that the company ended up pivoting to focus exclusively on the commercial market. It was a less ideal fit, but it actually paid.

Take:

One part slow bureaucracy

One part nepotism

One part jealousy of internal teams

One part good intentions (regulations to prevent said nepotism)

And you get a cluster of inexcusable outcomes.

The company seriously considered hiring a consulting firm whose sole business was helping other businesses land government contracts. The fact that the system is so inefficient that that kind of arbitrage opportunity exists is depressing.

The only companies that can possibly win government contracts here are those that are huge, with tons of staff dedicated to winning government contracts. The end result is they can charge the moon and the sky, not because they do what they do better than anyone else, but because they are just as bloated and inefficient as the government itself and can survive the process of winning the contract in the first place.

I wonder if thats one of the reasons, in this case the acid, is so expensive. You have to add all of the logistical and bureaucracy costs.

One solution is to be acquired by a defense contractor. A company which I worked for went that route.

I worked for a government contractor for a little over two weeks once. (I gave my 2 weeks notice almost right away.) It’s hard to express how wasteful and broken this process is. When I realized that I wouldn’t actually be doing anything useful for the first two months of my job, I just quit. No way could I do that kind of “work” day in and day out.

I did the exact same thing for similar reasons (although it would be nice to have a paycheck during COVID-19). 3 months of side projects, nothing related to what I had studied to do. We were projected to begin work 3 months later, but that was after dozens or so deadline pushbacks already.

My guess is that the cost of the raw chemicals is a small part of the $400,000. If there's 500 toilets on board that's $800 per toilet. What is probably much more expensive is safely transporting the chemicals in massive amounts, storing them, inspecting all the pipes after the treatment, and safely disposing of the chemicals. The GAO report doesn't say what they're using. I wouldn't even be that surprised if the acid flush was actually done with a base like Drano/lye

If you have to make 120m each in campaign donations to 3 senators to get the contract, plus another 40m in actual cost of research, supply and profit margin and then the navy only wants to buy 1000 units because its new and they get in trouble for buying necessary supplies instead of cool shit like torpedoes, then you sort of have to charge 400k a unit...

" 120m each in campaign donations to 3 senators to get the contract"

The contributions they are making are usually much lower. When you read the numbers it's actually surprising how little money you have to spend to get government money in return. Very good ROI.

Yeah, I'd heard that too. It's all so shameful...

Figure can include not only acid costs, but work amount and ship idle costs

Odds are that a good part of that expense is just storage for the massive amounts of the product. x100 of course. But when you need it, you'd better be able to get it and that's what's more than likely being paid for.

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