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Comment on G4S is just the latest in a long line of outsourcing disastersparent

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> Conventional wisdom is that the private sector is just much more efficient than the state can ever be, but I have never been able to find evidence-based studies for or against this.

The train of logic is that if coprorations become efficient to maximize returns on investments and products sold, then since government programs have neither a need for a return on investment and exist outside of market economics because all the associated costs are a forced payment by the "customers" that they have no reason for themselves to be efficient. The government as a whole might want them to be efficient, but there is no intrinsic benefit for a government program to maximize efficiency because that has no influence on its short run continued existence.

Not saying it couldn't be as efficient, but large programs end up with too many people in positions of power which means there's probably at least one bad apple in there trying to milk the lack of demand economics or operating costs.

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