[tus87]

- high pressure sales tactics convince management its cheaper to "buy off the shelf" than build your own

- but we aren't selling you a finished product (didn't we mention that?), just a base framework that needs customization. Cue fly-in-fly-out consultants for exorbitant daily rates.

- to lower costs, why not send your own staff to our "university" for thousands of dollars for a 5 day class?

- hire said staff to become consultants after customer pays for their training. They don't appear out of thin air!

- when customer finally ditches product, blame them for lack of investment and use contacts to complain at highest levels of bureaucracy.

- rinse and repeat.

A tried and tested formula.

[londons_explore]

Palantir combines those techniques with one extra thing... Government.

Government is far less concerned about money-efficiency, and nobody working in government has a direct interest in profitability (like being a shareholder would). Hence those tactics work all-the-better.

[dsfyu404ed]

Combine that with the fact that government can't go bankrupt. If some department blows through way more money than it should either it just doesn't get it's job done or it gets more money. Pretty painless compared to what happens to a company that blows through a bunch of money without delivering results.

[londons_explore]

I wonder what would happen if government departments were allowed to go bankrupt?

Simply say "this is your budget for the year, if you spend more, we'll fire every one of you and sell the office".

And then hire an entirely new team of non-overlapping staff next year.

[DavidHm]

Buying (a product) off the shelf is the right answer in many situations.

But not when you are not actually buying a product.