And who will buy the newly privatized 18f's products? The government. It's back to square one except now there are shareholders in the middle and the government (you) doesn't own its code anymore. A strictly worse state of affairs.
Which equals worse service.
I've yet to across a privatization project that improved anything for the end user, and I lived through a bunch in the 90s. Interregional rail, public transport, postal, telecom... They were all failures.
There may be one but it’s certainly the exception.
Though it greatly enriches those helming the effort.
No Musk fan, but that company has been doing a real bang-up (literally) job of developing affordable launch systems.
I think the SLS is a disaster, and I suspect is very much in DOGE's crosshairs.
As always, "it depends" is really where the truth lies. There doesn't seem to be anyone that is "always right," or "always wrong."
It's the extremists that believe that there is "always right/wrong," that cause the pain.
Privatization was well under way, but the incumbents were (and still are) awful.
NASA later took a risk with SpaceX, fostered competition, and it paid off enormously.
But this worked out because there was a market and demand (private sector satellites).
Lots of private for-profit cooks involved in SLS. That's the other issue common with privatization: way too easy to blame someone else/each other in the chain of subcontractors.
Repeat providers will win almost all contracts because they know how to navigate the "red tapes" and they know the inner people.
Competition? lol...
Furthermore, I can point you to SCRUM teams that are small, but are wildly inefficient. Size isn’t the root cause of inefficiency.
The better take is why is the bidding process so opaque? Why the red tape and micromanaging?
Most importantly: Would this still lead to a better outcome than motivated, short-term government employees?
USDS was a 4 year(?) stint; I declined because I need stability in the private sector at this stage of my life and can’t move to DC, but if I were in my 20s I would’ve jumped at the chance.
Edit: Well, not now but in 2019/2020.
I can help you reason through the whys on the inefficiencies if you’re truly interested.
These veteran private vendors just happened to know the road leading to a signature vs new competitors who are still learning the ropes.
The more important piece here is that the government ends up not owning anything because it farms out everything to the private, including Government land, critical govt function.
If you think that everything will be done correctly and the critical function won't get abused well then um.... You're looking at things unfold in real time.
It's interesting that:
In the US, people want to protect themselves from the government.
In the EU, people want the government to protect them.
Very profound mindset that leads to the difference in attitudes.