|
Part of the problem is that we continue to give the keys to the shop to bureaucrats who have zero real-world, business or employed-by-a-non-government-business experience. You really can't expect much from anyone who has lived their entire life within the confines of an ecosystem where personal decisions carry almost no risk. A lot of the time the rules are not made by bureaucrats but by politicians in receipt of lobbying money and an industry-supplied amendment which the politicians has neither read nor understood; also, when private actors dislike bureaucratic decisions, they frequently sue the bureaucratic agency in question to prevent its implementation. Blaming the problem on timid bureaucrats without acknowledging these frequently encountered situations is a hollow argument. FTA: As it turns out, Shaw’s retractable syringe hit just as these trends were converging. In fact, the year his product came onto the market, three of the nation’s largest GPOs merged to form a company called Premier, which managed buying for 1,700 hospitals, or about a third of all hospitals in the United States. Shortly thereafter, Premier signed a $1.8 billion, seven-and-a-half-year deal with Becton Dickinson. Under the agreement, member hospitals—among them Dallas-based Presbyterian, where Shaw would hit a brick wall—had to buy 90 percent of their syringes and blood collection tubes from the company. Over the next two years, BD landed similar deals with all but one major GPO. As a result, almost everywhere Shaw turned, he found hospital doors were closed to him. Here, for example, no government bureaucrats were involved at all. |
Businesses will adapt to the environment they operate within. If they can identify an advantage they will use it. I am not going to blame a business for moving within the existing framework any more than I would blame someone for taking advantage of SEO. In other words, given an environment where you can optimize your website for better search engine results, you do it. And that's fine. The problem is that those making the rules that create the opportunity for optimization are morons who have no clue about what they are doing or are simply corrupt.
Lobbying is a problem, but it is NOT illegal. I fully agree with disallowing it. So long as it isn't, those who can will use it. Again, you use the SEO tools available to you. When something starts to work against you or is no-longer allowed you stop using it.
Something else that needs to change: Government workers cannot be unionized. Why? They form a voting block that can influence the very laws that regulate them as employees of the government. It's as clear a conflict of interest situation as I can imagine. They vote as a block and favor anything that will keep them employed, protect their pensions, etc. The private sector has had to take haircuts for the last several years and suffer the consequences of ill-conceived plans from government. In sharp contrast to this the typical government worker is living in an isolated bubble where they can look forward to retirement while earning 80% to 90% of their pay for the rest of their lives and enjoying an amazing health-care package. Some even got raises. All on our backs.
In the real world the government workforce should have been cut by at least 25% to 50% and their salaries by another 20%+. Lifetime pensions seriously cut down and completely eliminated at some level. If you want to have a nice retirement make the right decisions and invest your money yourself, don't to on my back and my kids backs. This is so broken it's a tragedy.
I mean, see what's happening with the health-care law? They are hiring some 4,000 IRS agents to support it. These people are NEVER going to get fired. They'll probably cost us well in excess of a billion dollars a year in salaries, benefits and support systems.