As Nasa is a government agency, I wonder if lack of regulation and oversight played a hand in this.
This sort of scenario is exactly why I'm concerned about the recent trend towards rampant free market economics and libertarianism. Those ideas have merit in certain situations, but also increase risk to the public as witnessed here by losses that are proportionately much higher than any efficiency savings.
I'm also concerned about how many other agencies and companies might be affected by this sort of fraud that we haven't heard about yet. We saw the same thing happen with faulty (mostly imported) capacitors, insecure voting machines, increased healthcare costs, illness/financial hardship from GMOs and pesticides (again, mostly oversees), the list goes on.
It didn't used to be like this when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. We had different fraud then (for example monopolies and duopolies that held back telecommunications, the savings and loan scandal, industrial waste superfund sites...), but also a stronger manufacturing base in our economy. I'm just going to throw the idea out there that we're seeing a link between deregulation, fraud, increased costs on the public sector, and a slowing economy.
NASA has a ton of regulation and oversight that their contractors abide by. However, if you are in a trusted position of testing materials and not only you but your entire lab is compromised by cheating, how is anyone going to really find out unless someone speaks up? They were speeding up the test equipment between customer visits of the lab. This wasn't just laziness or someone fudging the numbers because its close enough, this was straight up fraud. NASA can't afford to test every little bit of everything that goes into a rocket themselves. They rely on their contractors to do their due diligence and make sure their vendors do everything right. Maybe a lot of stuff slipped past. There's probably bits of deficient aluminum all over the place but it held up enough during testing so no one noticed.
Fraud is a crime. It has no place in a free (i.e. libertarian) society.
I believe fraud is seen by libertarians as a type of theft and theft is a crime in any society or body of thought that values property rights. Nonaggression towards others and respect for property rights are the top tenents of libertarianism.
Even Ayn Rand, queen of capitalism and profits said the purpose of the courts is:
> to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, and to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.
1. Is there any compelling evidence that this incident is attributable to "free market economics"? It seems equally possible that it's attributable to notoriously poor incentive structures in government agencies. In my view it seems most likely that it's neither, in this particular case.
2. Is there evidence that there is a "recent trend towards rampant free market economics and libertarianism"? Again, this is an honest question; I've not seen a claim like this made before.
I'm not sure about your first question, but for your second question the evidence is everywhere. My news feed is filled with multiple articles per day about cutting regulations on just about everything, but mostly impacting the environment, or social justice issues:
Part of the issue is geographic. Being born and raised in Idaho, I've found myself surrounded by libertarians. Conservative-leaning people tend to move here from more liberal states on the coasts.
Now where it really gets interesting is when libertarian think tanks do the opposite of what might be expected:
In this case Idaho Freedom Foundation (a local libertarian think tank) is against public voter initiatives (which may someday lead to the legalization of marijuana in Idaho) but is for getting public approval for urban renewal projects like the Boise city library teardown/rebuild and new stadium.
I don't know man. That sounds more like you're in a media bubble than it sounds indicative of some broader trend. The media report the exceptional, not the norm. It doesn't mean you're wrong, but just that this evidence is about as weak as it gets.
This sort of scenario is exactly why I'm concerned about the recent trend towards rampant free market economics and libertarianism. Those ideas have merit in certain situations, but also increase risk to the public as witnessed here by losses that are proportionately much higher than any efficiency savings.
I'm also concerned about how many other agencies and companies might be affected by this sort of fraud that we haven't heard about yet. We saw the same thing happen with faulty (mostly imported) capacitors, insecure voting machines, increased healthcare costs, illness/financial hardship from GMOs and pesticides (again, mostly oversees), the list goes on.
It didn't used to be like this when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. We had different fraud then (for example monopolies and duopolies that held back telecommunications, the savings and loan scandal, industrial waste superfund sites...), but also a stronger manufacturing base in our economy. I'm just going to throw the idea out there that we're seeing a link between deregulation, fraud, increased costs on the public sector, and a slowing economy.