1) Federal government, yes, state governments, most of 'em, local governments, mostly not. City and county-level governments are hugely varied in size, but it

1) Federal government, yes, state governments, most of 'em, local governments, mostly not. City and county-level governments are hugely varied in size, but it doesn't take much for a private company to be larger than vast swaths of them. Of course, you're right that no private business is as big as the US federal government. 2) A lot of companies do have elaborate internal processes for getting anything done; the shareholders don't really do much for the day-to-day operation of a company, seldom where it comes to purchasing decisions. 3) It's really more regulations, which have to be changed in concert with laws, than laws themselves. Especially at the local level, governments have pretty wide leeway so long as they do things under a general framework of fairness and competitiveness (again, varies based on corruption at work....but private companies are corrupt, too; we just don't get to peek under the covers nearly as often.)