Information is very poorly distributed. It's hard to overstate how bad this is. Yes, that's contrary to what's required for a well functioning market. That mark

Information is very poorly distributed. It's hard to overstate how bad this is. Yes, that's contrary to what's required for a well functioning market. That markets function even a tiny fraction as well as they're supposed to on paper is practically a miracle, given, you know, reality. That they often wreck everything or are much more awful than we might expect or do weird crap like letting large orgs be astoundingly inefficient is unsurprising, given this. This is relevant because it means it's damn hard to evaluate a vendor aside from "they're big and everyone's using them so they're probably fine?" So big companies get big contracts, even when they suck, especially from other big companies (and governments). Making a big organization work well probably requires a bunch of highly-paid people to take on personal responsibility and make judgement calls where the buck stops with them. No-one wants to do this. It's personally risky and there's a kind of game everyone plays where they know everyone's avoiding this and it's considered fine as long as you fake Doing Manager Stuff and bring the Big Four in when you can't avoid making a decision, so you can blame them if something goes wrong. The same attitude infects the entire organization, unavoidably. If the big contracts are rolling in anyway (see above) there's little incentive to take personal risks. It's an example of success breeding success, purely for its own sake.