Lockheed Martin Shows The Raw Power of Unbridled Avarice

Imagine you were completely crass and immoral. You wanted to extract as much money as you could from as many people as you could. How would you do it? Here's the three things I would do:
1. I'd defeat my competitors by intentionally underbidding every contract. Or I'd come in at the same cost as my competitor but make outlandish scope promises in my bid.
2. I'd make those bids knowing I could weasel contract modifications in later to get more money. This would be accomplished by "buying" Congress. How would I buy Congress? I would open offices for my company in hundreds of Congressional districts, and I'd use the jobs created as leverage. I'd use the plethora of office locations to spread my work around too, and use the capital being pushed into those districts as further leverage.
3. When I missed deadlines, my competition sued, or the client balked, I'd blame subcontractors or the Client. Then I'd use the political capital I'd earned (mentioned in 2.)  and call Congresspersons to make the complaints go away. Then I'd make campaign contributions.

At some point, my company would have offices in more than 140 Congressional districts. I'd be paying tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. I'd be raking in tens of billions in contracts (pdf) during the deepest recession in nearly 100 years. And I'd be catching hell for missing deadlines and for hundred-billion-dollar cost overruns. But I wouldn't care, because I'm crass and immoral.

What I want to know is this: who are the engineers at these sorts of companies? How can they live with themselves? I used to think that engineers were, in general, an ethical bunch compared to average or at least compared to some, like MBAs or Wall Street money launderers. But all these companies that are, in every sense of the word, invested in warmongering and tax-dollar-hoarding seem to employ a small army of engineers. It makes me sad.


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