Why it is Important that Software Projects Fail
berglas.org
berglas.org
Their development employs many bureaucrats, consultants and contractors and their expenditure supports an even larger number of people throughout society.
... by the same argument I should stroll around the city and burn some cars, thereby offering employment to many firefighters, car producers, actuaries and all their suppliers.
The point about ever-expanding bureaucracies is well noted however. Perhaps it is our duty to design really bad programming languages and methodologies, to sell them to government organisations and similar bureaucracies in order to drive their likelihood of success even lower. Reminds me of the true purpose of Ada ... http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/sigplannotices/gigo-1997-0...
This is similar to what we experienced in Europe with nobles: the end of feodal times made noblemen mostly useless as warriors or local mobsters; since they had nothing useful to do with their free time, they became passionate with court intrigues, ballroom dancing, fancy wigs, duels, and other improductive occupations.
However, it's been fixed: after centuries of wasted potential, capitalism created a draft toward productive activities, and the dominant classes worked at organizing the workforce, eventually leading to the industrial revolution.
We have (again, as a society) to find a way to make today's socially useful activities attractive: most people will concede that an eldery care person is way more useful than many middle managers; yet the latters get more money and social recognition. I suspect that such issues aren't fixed spontaneously by the so-called "invisible hand of market".
Assuming one's values are normative leads to assuming that the fact they aren't reflected in the world must be the result of some external entity, a secret society, or this nebulous "the system". Instead, if one assumes that one's views aren't normative, then it is clear why one's views are not reflected in the world in aggregate: it's a simple tautology. Occam's Razor applies.
"The system" is not an entity unto itself, it is intractable from the people within it, it is nothing more than the people within it. The "invisible hand of the market" is merely a short-hand, anthropomorphizing term for "the aggregate activity of the people within the poorly defined borders of 'the market'." If something isn't a particular way, it's because "most people" demonstrably do NOT concede your point, or if they do, do not assign such great importance to it as to warrant change.
I don't like that elderly care personnel are paid less than middle managers either, but I'm not suggesting to force everyone else to make that valuation. When you say, "we as a society have to find a way...", and if you are suggesting that way be via government intervention, then really you're saying, "I want to force everyone else in society to pay for my way..." (undemocratic, even totalitarian). Then we have to write a new tax code to pay for it, and we get this situation here in the OP. If instead you are suggesting that you will live by example and proselytize to your fellow man to do the same, then really you're using "the invisible hand of the market" to enact the change you desire.
If instead you are suggesting that you will live by example and proselytize to your fellow man to do the same, then really you're using "the invisible hand of the market" to enact the change you desire.
It sounded to me like his point was more that it doesn't work to just sit around waiting for the "invisible hand", i.e., someone else, to fix a problem like that. Someone has to get up and actually do something and persuade people.
Actually, "use government" to fight pointless bureaucracy sounds at best as a joke.
It seems to me that many people revering the "invisible hand of market" imply that there's no point acting to cause a social change: the best possible world should emerge from individuals fighting to maximize their financial wealth.
If you take "invisible hand of market" in the widest possible sense, I'd rather call it "natural selection".
Fixed link projects (bridges and tunnels) tend to cost 33% more than estimated (sigma=60%). Rail is even worse at 44% more than estimated, coming in under budget only about 12% of the time.
Anyways, other interesting links on the subject: http://blogs.msdn.com/dave_froslie/archive/2005/03/07/389113...
http://blogs.msdn.com/steverowe/archive/2005/02/28/381910.as...
Is this an example of truth through mere assertion, or of pluralizing anecdote to equal data?
In any case, I disagree with the assertion, because I think it's a stretch that such a couple would consider what was "basic" in 1955 to be acceptable. It's tough, though, since quality of life is so, well, qualitative.
Another aspect I question about the mid-50s is how war surplus affected cost of goods. How many of those single income households were buying goods that had been subsidized by their wives' work for the war effort? There are strong hints of this effect in early computer power supplies, as 400Hz wasn't historically common in commercial power.
There are many things wrong with the way our society rewards work/ constructs bureaucracies. I think, however, that it wouldn't be too hard to come up with some practical solutions rather than encourage subconscious intentional failure.
Your hubris knows no limits!
To reduce amount of bureaucracy you'd have to pick some work-consuming area of the operation, make it obsolete by government act and fire all the people that were doing that work so they will not be available for other tasks inflating them.
To avoid their complaints you should still pay them salaries for few years but allow and encourage them to find themselves another job outside government sector.
So if the government not only eliminated the IRS but eliminated the entire Department of Justice, Federal spending would go down by less than one percent. Roll on the revolution, dude!
If some layer or department of a large company's bureaucracy is consuming about 1.5% of its revenues (just as the Australian tax office consumes about 1.5% of Australia's GDP), then the upper management will never have much interest in driving that proportion down to 0.5%. So as the company grows, that layer or department will grow as well in spite of automation, just as the tax office has grown.