Long ago, I read an account about some factories in the Soviet Union that made cookware for soldiers. Of course, if you’re a soldier, you’d like your cookware to be as light as possible, because you’re going to be carrying it around. And you want it to heat as quickly as possible, because you have to either find or carry your fuel.
However, the managers of these factories were rewarded, not for producing lighter cookware, or better cookware, or more cookware. They were rewarded for using more raw materials. The more raw materials a factory consumed, the more highly its managers were rated.
Can you guess what happened?
