Freezy on Nostr: I've been working as an engineer in a midsized orthopedics company in Germany since ...

I've been working as an engineer in a midsized orthopedics company in Germany since about 5 years. In Germany our health care system is deeply intertwined with government institutions. As far as I can see, this has at least one significant disadvantage .. and that's the enormous amount of capital misalocation / wealth destruction, due to incentive misalignment. Exemplary, my company has obtained several government funded product devlopment projects along the years. These projects usually involve several institutions (private companies and universities) coming together to apply for the fund promising to deliver a certain amount of work. From what I've seen so far .. these projects 'never' produce an actual product and enormous amounts of tax payer money are wasted in the process. In my small 4 person 'research and development department' about 30 - 50% of working hours are allocated to constructing excel files about which work was done by whom in a plausible way. Hereby, these tables are heavily .. 'optimized' .. to appease the bureaucrats that will check them for inconsistencies. I believe this to be the case everywhere and not just in my company. It appears that the business of 'securing-government-funding' results in an enormous destruction of wealth. Not out of malice but due to misaligned incentives. The company is mostly concerned about securing as much funding as possible, while getting away with the least amount of work possible. I've seen how more expensive & less suitable machines were chosen over more suitable ones, simply to meet some spending target to qualify for the fund. It also results in the creation of stuff that politicians think people want, instead of stuff that people actually want, as the company's focus is shifted from serving the customer to seducing bureaucrats.