No, this is the state of play even before we start talking about lobbyists.

The regulations accumulated like that as the result of some grievously bad deal that happened a long time ago on a project you've never heard of. Because of this forgotten screw-up, Congress passed laws to require oversight and record keeping for this, that or the other detail.

Also, when Congress appropriates money in the budget, they allocate the money for certain purposes. In government, they call that "colors of money". Certain colors can pay for R&D, certain colors for initial purchases, other colors for maintenance, things like that. This can guide certain government decisions, such as whether to pay for more R&D now to have lower initial procurement costs, or buy cheaper components in initial procurement and plan for higher maintenance costs, etc. Using funds for purposes not consistent with the appropriated purpose is a crime.

Let's use my cheeseburger example. If you want one, you determine what kind of money you have and what quality you want, and some qualities may be out of your price range. You then go to McDonalds, or Red Robin, or Rainforest Cafe, whatever, and you pay your money and you get a (restaurant name) cheeseburger. Let's say they advertise a double quarter pounder, medium rare with Tillamook medium cheddar cheese with pickles, onions, tomatoes on a sesame seed bun, and you want all that.

Now, let's say the government wants the same cheeseburger, only they're going to buy 10,000 of them. As a result of the FAR, the following certifications must be established before delivery and acceptance by the Decision Authority:

- Weight of each hamburger patty must be +/- 5% of the Critical Performance Metric of 0.25 lbs. Continuous sampling, measurement and reporting must be done to maintain quality/quantity standards to the governments specifications (The restaurant/manufacturer's own QA process is done separately and in parallel, but has no bearing on the government's metrics.), reported monthly
- The cooking process must be certified to achieve a 95% outcome of Medium Rare (see appendix A for definition). Sampling, measuring and reporting to be provided monthly.
- Quality of other ingredients are also to be sampled, measured and reported, monthly.
- The economic health of the providers of cheese, tomato, onion, ground beef, buns, etc must be assessed for economic viability, and a multi-source procurement process must be implemented for any critical material to ensure the supply of all components even in the event of a supplier going out of business. If a component can only be procured from one source (possibly for proprietary reasons), the liability of the manufacturing line must be assessed and if necessary, the government will buy the whole plant to assure the production of the material even if no one else on the market wants that product any more.

Without considering corruption, wastage, inefficiency, lobbying, political favors, etc, this is how you make a $200 hamburger. All by the regulations.

It's a military, construction, health, fill-in-the-government-blank, problem.

General Dynamics, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton, etc provide a critical service: they understand government regulation. If you've ever seen a printed out copy of the Federal Acquisition Regulations, you'd be surprised that gravitational collapse isn't happening.

For most businesses, it's not worth taking a government contract until they're asking you to provide a COTS solution, where you know what you're selling, and the government pays you, and that's the end of it. The government is getting exactly what the commercial market gets. Firm Fixed Price contract, no surprises.

As soon as the government wants it customized in any way, and they're willing to pay you to customize it, that rabbit hole goes all the way down. Every stipulation of the contract must be assessed for compliance, and every assessment requires some kind of test, and every test has a schedule towards passage of the test, and every last one of these things costs time and resources, which means money, which the government is going to pay you, because the government wants its double cheeseburger in a way that no-one else wants it.

If you're an action oriented kind of entrepreneur, this will drive you insane. So you don't do it yourself. You go in as a subcontractor to one of the big Gov-BS-Handlers. You do the work, they firewall you from the BS, 50% for you, 250% for them (after change orders and spec changes and reviews and program management overhead) and everyone is happy with the $500 hammer (non-sparking, minimal toxic release, aircraft rated, 8 pound, loading bracket hinge, for the hitting of, one count)

The nit is well picked. I shall resolve to remember that detail.

I was told dissent is patriotic.

I dissented with some things (rather vigorously) during the 43rd Presidency. I dissented with a lot of things during the 42nd Presidency.

The 44th President is going to get my dissent as well.

Welcome to the United States of America. I can see you just arrived.

<lol>Wud hav had it neway</lol>

On November 3rd, 2004, one could predict that there would be change happening on January 20th, 2009. One could predict that the 44th president of the United States of America would be inaugurated.

It is now the responsibility of the 44th President to ensure that there will be an orderly transition of power to the 45th President. It is also his responsibility to ensure that there will be an orderly transition to the 100th President, and the 200th President, and so on.

So Help Barack H. Obama, God. So Help Us All.