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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

> You're required to have a certified minority partner. Even if they contribute absolutely nothing besides a physical disability, skin color, or gender. You can imagine all the corruption around this & 'buying partners.'

Anyone who has done government contracting has seen this, too. Generally, what happens is the prime contractor who the government actually hires must be underrepresented minority-owned. That contractor might just be one person who own a shell LCC, whose job is to simply "be Native Alaskan" or something. Then that prime will subcontract out to regular, name brand companies that actually do all the work. As far as I've seen, this is a pretty common and well-understood pattern, at least in mil/aerospace.

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Guy Brown is just (essentially) Staples, for instance. I've seen this with office supplies contracts.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20131211005139/en/Guy...

In addition, for U.S.A. defense contracting, preference is given to veterans, e.g. "veteran owned", so similar arrangements are made to have affiliations in place, or "owners" established.

Another place you might see this is cannabis dispensary licenses being preferenced towards those who've been jailed for cannabis-related crimes.

In all the cases, it's likely someone who historically hasn't been paid well, so I personally don't care, since it seems to me like the preference is achieving its desired effect in the end (said person getting paid).

Weirdly, they don't preference contracts for shell corps owned by, say, poor white trash from Middletown, Ohio -- despite these people meeting your definition of "someone who historically hasn't been paid well".

But I digress. In the biz, if the contract has to be trafficked through a shell corp where the owner takes a 20% cut, everyone simply bids a 20% higher rate.

It's the taxpayer's prerogative if they would rather their government pay an inflated contracting rate -- as opposed to using that money for education, infrastructure, social services, etc.

> since it seems to me like the preference is achieving its desired effect in the end (said person getting paid).

The desired effect is stratify the populace into more and more tribes that can fight amongst themselves. You give special treatment to some, thereby weakening political opposition and obtaining plausible deniability to say that you helped.

If you want to help someone who hasn’t been paid well historically, then you pull up the database of tax filings, sort from lowest to highest and deposit some money, or give them access to education, or blah blah. “Historically not paid well” has nothing to do with skin tone, religion, gender, or anything other than history of income.

Veteran, woman, or minority owned, more specifically. The US Department of Commerce’s minority business development agency can provide more information about the “8a” program.

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