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Comment by kpmcc | Hacker News Reader

This is hilarious. Amazon: "How can you choose MICROSOFT?! We're the best" DoD: "Uh, sure, but we like Microsoft." Zon: "BUT WE'RE THE BEST. DONT YOU UNDERSTAND" DoD: "Uh, no" Zon: "BUT, BUT, BUT THAT'S NOT FAIR" DoD: "Tough."

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Choosing a contractor out of personal preference of the president is why the laws around federal bidding were created in the first place - contracts paid by taxpayers are intended to be based on the merit of the bid.

Not exactly, women/minority owned companies are often explicitly favored in the bidding process. It really depends though, as different government agencies have different priorities and criteria.

>Not exactly, women/minority owned companies are explicitly favored in the bidding process.

The exact opposite is true: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/04/women-owned-biz-rec...

Where did you even hear this claim?

They're describing a procurement process that is designed to favor ownership by women, minority groups, veterans, and disabled veterans in particular.

Programs like this enter into it: https://business.defense.gov/Small-Business/WOSB/

You're absolutely correct that the outcome is quite transparently wildly inequitable. I think it's possible that it could be the case that both assertions could be correct at the same time.

I didn't hear about this. I was a party to such a bidding process at a government agency.

Your updated comment is much less untrue, though the GAO reports widespread fraud in the procurement processes for these minority, veteran, and women owned businesses as described in the above link.

That's the only practical response to a ridiculous law.

Affirmative Action for capital owners is absurd.

It's less the personal preference of the president and more the DoD.

Microsoft has a decades long good relationship with the DoD, specifically on the security and access control side of things.

Well it's not that hilarious, you would hope that the DoD actually does have some kind of justification than "uh no" and "tough" about how its spending 10 billion dollars.

this is a really silly post for two reasons. First Amazon actually makes a fairly specific case, namely that they would have been cheaper by a fairly significant margin.

Secondly I very much hope government procurement to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars follows objective criteria rather than someone at the DoD going "huh, okay".

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