This is, incidentally, the formalization of my intuition about bureaucracies and general organizational efficiencies[0] - basically, organizational inefficiency comes almost entirely from coordination costs. This is why government organizations are inefficient (way too many stakeholders), why big companies tend to be about as bureaucratic as governments, and while small governmental projects are much less efficient than small private project (because "small" government ops still has lots of non-obvious stakeholders that come from accountability requirements).
Government organizations also have an obligation to make many of their services available to everyone, without discrimination, whereas companies can choose to ignore portions of the market (unless it's a protected class) that cost more to service than the value gained.
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This is, incidentally, the formalization of my intuition about bureaucracies and general organizational efficiencies[0] - basically, organizational inefficiency comes almost entirely from coordination costs. This is why government organizations are inefficient (way too many stakeholders), why big companies tend to be about as bureaucratic as governments, and while small governmental projects are much less efficient than small private project (because "small" government ops still has lots of non-obvious stakeholders that come from accountability requirements).
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[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16205338
Government organizations also have an obligation to make many of their services available to everyone, without discrimination, whereas companies can choose to ignore portions of the market (unless it's a protected class) that cost more to service than the value gained.