Why would any organization, especially one heavily based on knowledge gathering, prioritize a reduction in workforce.
If someone is designing a car, and one of his criteria is that using more steel is better, is that a good thing? If someone is writing a novel, and wants to raise the word count, is that useful?
That's not a fair comparison. If you looked at one of the early slides in the presentation that the slide in question came from, you can see that NASA decision makers are trying to balance three conflicting objectives: 1) Budget realities, 2) risks, and 3) benefit to stakeholders. This is no different than any corporate board. The stakeholders of NASA are the American people. As such, NASA has a duty (implicit or otherwise) to bring as much benefit to the American people as possible. It does this through several avenues. One of the biggest, and one that is often overlooked is the amount of knowledge that NASA has generated. You show me one for-profit company that has been as open as NASA at making all of their information public and available. [1] Secondly, it would be naive to think that NASA does not have an obligation to provide benefit to their stakeholders by providing jobs.
With this framework in mind, what objective is the car designer trying to balance when deciding to use more steel? If the writer decides to use more words, what objective are the trying to meet? The first case you bring up is ridiculous and I'm not going to address any further. The second case is more fair. The novel writer does have to balance clarity of writing and the amount of pleasure they bring to the reader. Someone buying a 50 page book is going to feel pretty ripped off if they read it in 30 minutes. Why are the Harry Potter books so damn long? Because people love to read them. She could have just as easily written the same story in a lot shorter format if she had so decided.
Everyone's defense of NASA is that they have generated a lot of knowledge. The question no one is asking is that what's the cost for generating that knowledge? Wikipedia suggests that NASA has spent 418 billion dollars from 1958 to 2008. Do you really think we got our money's worth?
Could you name few inventions derived from NASA's knowledge which have helped us tremendously? Compare this to the research/inventions done by private corporations.
And as I pointed out in my other reply, why should Government take money from people, give it to NASA and NASA will return that money back to people by providing jobs? Why not reduce taxes so that we can eliminate waste by having NASA as the middleman?
Secondly, it would be naive to think that NASA does not have an obligation to provide benefit to their stakeholders by providing jobs.
Well, that's exactly the problem. The goal of any organization should be its mission. "Organize the world's information", "Dominate the operating system industry", or "Explore Space", etc. The problem with government organizations is that the employers can vote as a block. Thus over time the mission warps from "Exploring space" to "Provide jobs to NASA engineers"
Actually, if you look at the German car industry, you'll find more of a stake-holder driven culture rather than a share-holder driven culture as in the US.
I was just reading an economist piece on how the German people actually rate stake-holder interests above share-holder interests.
If someone is designing a car, and one of his criteria is that using more steel is better, is that a good thing? If someone is writing a novel, and wants to raise the word count, is that useful?