Ask HN: What is the biggest waste of money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the biggest waste of money?

7 pointsalganet18 comments

In your opinion, what is the single biggest waste of resources ever?

I'd say war (and the war complex) - but modern war depends on oil, and often capturing oil is the reason for a war. Wasting (insread of reusing) material is next, then crypto.

Intentional destruction of perfectly-good unsold merchandise in the name of brand exclusivity.

Fossil Fuels. I read 70% of it is wasted in extraction, processing, transportation and inefficient use. This despite ~100 years of working on the problem.

McKinsey and other such consulting companies.

The managements who hire consultants to tell them what they should be doing.

Why do people hire them though? Surely at that price they can hire an individual consultant.

To transfer accountability for risky decisions?

I think it's a common misconception that management consultants are hired to provide advice or add value. If you look at who actually does the work (sleepy, recent college grads with zero work experience and no understanding of the target industry), how could consultants add value? Do you really think a CEO with 20 years of experience in an industry needs/wants a PowerPoint about strategy?

The reason they're hired is that decision-makers at firms want to take risk, but they don't want to be fired if it blows up in their face.

If I'm a CEO and I hire McKinsey to recommend to me the thing I already wanted to do, then I can take credit if it works, or I can cover my ass if it fails and say, "McKinsey's Harvard-trained consultants told me to do this."

Other firms, like Accenture, actually do some implementation of projects, which means they're also a temporary staffing solution in some cases.

Sounds about right. I used to consult. The briefing was that we were a bulletproof vest. We hired a ton of people. I didn't know what they did, but the boss told us that their jobs was mainly seat filling.

I remember Saudi cutting funding for consultants though: https://dgagroup.com/insight/asg-analysis-saudi-arabia-issue...

The king was supposedly pissed that the nation's leaders were not even taking responsibility for the economic plan. They'd say things like, "Here's a plan written by McKinsey." Which is a little odd because you'd think that they'd steal ideas and all that. It's easier to claim ownership. It's more cost-effective to fire the people who hire expensive consultants.

Seems to me that Al here is still burned by the McKinsey consultants that LumberTek hired for the Binford takeover.

I am mulling war (active or preparatory) or the staggering concentration of wealth.

Luxury in general. You're paying money to impress someone but they are generally unimpressed because you're paying money to impress them.

Cryptocurrency mining.

Farm subsidies and the military industrial complex.

95% of “AI” applications.

Insane amounts of energy and capital being incinerated for no particular benefit, and with no prospect of a return on investment.

e-waste. I would love to repurpose and keep going most of my stuff but...

...what are the reasons for not doing it? I can only think of costs of repair, switching to other software.

zero documentation, you have to reverse engineer all the circuits, soc's, and everything up the stack from there. Obsolecence by obscurity.

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