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Comment by xnorswap | Hacker News Reader

This is why it's so important to have public contracts drafted and reviewed by experts.

The original contract should have provision in place that the system be maintained, that the school be notified in any change in parent company ownership, etc.

It would then be much easier to compel the company to do the replacement and if necessary sue them to recover the $1.2m cost.

The issue isn't just one of a technological solution inferior to old fashioned manual lights, it's that public bodies get hoodwinked into contracts that are unfavourable.

There were similar stories from the era of mass-PFI in the UK, with stories about how teachers weren't allowed to change lightbulbs but had to pay a maintenance company £50 to do so every time a bulb went.

Public bodies rushing to accept contracts thinking that suppliers have their best interests in mind is horribly naive.

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> Public bodies rushing to accept contracts thinking that suppliers have their best interests in mind is horribly naive.

"Public bodies" do not rush ... People who work there do. Those people really do not have that much of an incentive to be careful. They do not really bear the costs of their decision. They are also people, susceptible to having their decision influenced by whatever small or not so small immediate benefit they can derive regardless of the ultimate cost to the people who actually pay for the consequences of their decisions. And, this is before one brings in the possibility of corrupt collusion between the people who spend other people's money and people who receive it.

Too balance this perspective, let's remember that not all public workers are bad people.

Many of them are also underfunded and understaffed, and don't have the lawyers and means of a rich corporation. The GP's "hoodwinked" was apropos.

Does any government agency claim to be funded correctly?

There was an article here on HN some time ago about some enormous project in California (a bridge? a tunnel?). IIRC the state's engineering department was quite small and underfunded, and so they depended on the contracted company for their engineering expertise. This did not go well. As I recall, the problems were that the state engineers were not experienced enough (because private pays better and seniors leave) and there weren't enough of them. For the life of me, I can't remember what the project was, but maybe someone else here does.

How about small towns entering into agreements with big box stores where they are simply unmatched and "hoodwinked" into accepting arrangements that aren't favorable. [0] Presumably, towns could make better contacts with better legal resources.

Do you have a better solution to this problem or should we just let the corps run our lives?

[0]: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/11/3/big-box-stores...

It's just highly suspicious that every criticism of government ends up at "You don't pay us enough money" especially in the United States. It's never incompetence, corruption or malfeasance, the solution is always hiring more of the people who made the mess in the first place and paying the existing ones more.

Alternatively, there is room for "incompetence, corruption or malfeasance" AND being underfunded or understaffed. I don't think there are any absolutes here.

I remember this story to. Probably from a YouTube channel. My first guess would be this one[0] but I can’t find it.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/@PracticalEngineeringChannel/videos

I think you're looking for this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZxqVC_tBdc

Note, however, that the state, in this story, that has underfunding problems and cannot figure out how to adequately supervise the civil engineering contracts is not California, it's Texas. Y'know, for all those who like to take sides on California vs Texas.

https://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/army-thanks-but-no-ta...

> Too balance this perspective, let's remember that not all public workers are bad people.

"This perspective" said nothing about "public" workers being bad and only referred to the implications of the incentives they have at scale.

OPM culture

You mean like how google is inserting chromebooks into education for a loss, to one day raise prices at the detriment of education facilities who bought into the google classroom offering. Color me surprised /s

In the 2000s, my sister had to buy an apple computer or laptop because the college required it for education students.

This is a result of apple donating computers to school in the 80's. Google, really, is just following other people's example.

Apple never donated computers to schools. There are thousands of them. The company would go bankrupt in no time. What they did have is a company like MECC who wrote a lot of great Edtech software for Apple and Mac computers.

That relationship with education and creators helped carry them out of the pre-bankruptcy days.

School districts always had a budget in mind and traditional Apple would try and meet it. Now, they don’t even try. Just knock $100 off and call it the education edition is about as far as they are willing to extend.

My school had donated Apple computers.

Edit: And they apparently are even today: https://www.apple.com/connectED/index.html "We’ve donated an iPad to every student, a Mac and iPad to every teacher, and an Apple TV to every classroom."

Mine, too. In a rural area in the Midwest in the 80s.

http://hackeducation.com/2015/02/25/kids-cant-wait-apple

Apple never donated computers to schools.

A quick google search will give you the "kids can't wait" program. This program allowed donated computers to go to 9000 California schools.

The others may have been discounted, sure, but they did donate and it still means that Google is just following in the footsteps of those before them.

I'll also note that $100 off of a current computer isn't as bad as it sounds, considering the low starting price of a good-enough-for-internet-and-school machine. I had green letters on a black screen back in the 80s, giving way to not-so-refined pixel art a few years later, all for a computer that cost more than they do now before you even adjust for inflation. Computers simply aren't the same sort of cost they were back then (they still cost, but the machinery isn't as big of an expense)

They don't even have to raise prices. Keeping a generation locked into Google products could turn them into the Microsoft of the next generation of office workers.

> The original contract should have provision in place that the system be maintained, that the school be notified in any change in parent company ownership, etc.

> It would then be much easier to compel the company to do the replacement and if necessary sue them to recover the $1.2m cost.

The way this usually works is the original company sells its useful assets and then goes bankrupt. Or goes bankrupt and sells its useful assets. You can't compel a company to stay in continuous operation, and if you pay for an established company to do the work, you'll get complaints about paying too much for the work, because they'll charge you more to cover for future things they're compelled to do because they actually plan to be around.

> This is why it's so important to have public contracts drafted and reviewed by experts.

You mean like how even the most minor stuff winds up getting reviewed by a PE firm to much expense?

>The issue isn't just one of a technological solution inferior to old fashioned manual lights, it's that public bodies get hoodwinked into contracts that are unfavourable.

They aren't stupid. Don't give them that easy out. They know the contracts are BS. They don't care because a) they can afford it b) every other municipality is signing similar ones so it's "industry standard"

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