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I am not sure this is feasible in practice. The government is not a business so "competing" isnt a fair rubric. The government has unlimited resources and does
by holograham 13y ago
I am not sure this is feasible in practice. The government is not a business so "competing" isnt a fair rubric. The government has unlimited resources and does not have to "make a profit". I dont know how you could create an apples to apples comparison. In the business world it's easy...profit.
Companies reputation is a fuzzy number too. As the stock market adage goes "past performance does not guarantee future success". Sure brand reputation means something but how do you measure that and create equal comparison...across hugely disparate government contracts. Comparing the US Census contract (yes this is contracted out almost entirely) to the F35 contract would be absurd.
I do not necessarily have the end all solution. I tend to favor smaller government because I am not sure our current political system scales to be able to execute large projects (I tend to think the ideas behind many large scale projects are correct but fail when you consider the costs of implementation within our political constraints).
- nucleardog 13y agoI think the idea behind having the government compete wasn't that it was a fair competition, it was just a way to spend the least amount of money. If the government is able to do something internally for $500m, and the disadvantaged private sector is going to cost $750m, then let the government do it themselves. (On the government's books, this is a net win.) If the government costs it at $500m, but a private company can do it for $400m... Why let the government do it? Contract it out and save money.