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by advael
17 days ago
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I stand corrected that all these contracts are no-bid, though some functions still are. I remain skeptical that paired contracts do much to help competition or efficiency in a market that tends toward consolidation, and am unsure why you add the unrelated point about corporate taxes, which isn't particularly revelatory: It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability, and indeed this seems to be disincentivised by the tax structure. People who are upset about how corporations operate financially should push for changing this on a policy level |
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Launch, Human Spaceflight, Satellites and Satellite Internet are now (and for most of a decade) been primarily American. Even the foreign competition is largely American (See Telesat)
Paired contracts (openly bid from a larger pool of qualified companies mind), a fixed cost for delivering ends/products etc have meant lower costs to the government, redundancy in case of failure, less time between having an idea and having it implemented (HASTE, LUCAS and Starshield).
Of course there's the risk that this means companies exit the market if they can't deliver in the old environment (SDA, Starshield) but there's still the option for old companies to compete in truly novel projects (F-47) with the old contracting system. And pairing also allows the government to bring in new companies to the fold to compete with the old guard.
As for corporate taxes, those articles are standard fare to direct misplaced anger at companies that aren't doing well on the whole (because they've never turned a profit or are in a low margin business) or are reinvesting all their money(something that's supposed to be a good thing). We aren't talking about transfer pricing and similar shenanigans. Accountants just roll their eyes. But it breeds unnecessary anger (See the "BlackRock is buying single family homes"; "SpaceX has got ~$30B of government subsidies" nonsense too)
>It's well-understood that a ton of companies operate in a mode that doesn't chase profitability
In the end these articles insinuate that said company isn't paying their fair share/ is freeloading on the polity.
The responses to the articles clearly show that it's not well understood.
It's the best and worst of times, but we should at least have clarity on what's better and what's worse.