[derefr]

> Remember the Phenix pay system? It was an IBM project that was supposed to save us 70 million a year, instead they paid IBM an additional 2+ BILLION to try and fix the broken crap they'd delivered. Never even worked, they're currently taking bids to replace it already.

Do you really believe that this was a result of bad in-the-moment decision-making at all levels, instead of a result of being trapped by previously-negotiated long-term vendor exclusivity agreements?

(In my experience, governments are generally good at cutting their losses — they're far more rational re: the sunk-cost fallacy than individual people are. So it would be surprising to me if this were true.)

[AlbertCory]

Actually, they're as bad as everyone else at that, e.g, Obamacare website; state of Maine website; lots more.

And then we have, by three or four orders of magnitude, the great Sunk Cost Fallacy of all time, by anyone ever:

Not ending World War One in 1915, 1916, or 1917: "All those lives and treasure we've spent! We have to get something for it."

And so we had the Spanish Flu, which killed more than the combat deaths, and of course, the combat deaths.

https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu

Not to mention World War Two.