Like a religion or a cult, you have to cut through the ideology; the ideas are parroted to control the narrative.
https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/the-rot-at-the-heart-of...
https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-disaster-american-bus...
The problem is monopoly. Spacefaring isn’t exactly the type of work that attracts the safe and secure job for life types. (Most folks I know at SpaceX would have chosen another career if the only option were a public job at public pay with public promotion limits.)
Sure, but we aren't talking about hiring astronauts (who ironically do tend to spend their entire career in government because it's the only place to get the thrills they want from fighter pilot to space).
We're talking about quality professional welders. Stereotyping them into one bucket would be silly, but I think it's fair to assume there are a large number of welders who wouldn't mind a guaranteed, high paying job with a guaranteed retirement package.
Extend that to like 90% of the jobs required to make a spaceship...
What the government should have done is reduce their pay for missing deadlines by having milestones in the contract. At that point paying more makes economic sense and wages would rise.
A union fixes this in the long term, but that will take time. Government can employ rapidly. Something, quickly, needs to change before we forget how to build because MBAs, accountants, and lawyers burned the place down for shareholder value. There are two astronauts stuck in space very publicly demonstrating this.
