Comment by convolvatron

this is absolutely true. I can spin up a government consultancy and get inside the system so that I can low bid contracts, get extensions and not provide any meaningful service at all, that's a comfortable parasitic life. I worked in the US Dod and there was no meaningful quality difference between the 2x salary contractors with their additional 2x overhead than the lifers.

we can bemoan that the government isn't being efficient, but involving people with even less oversight whose only goal is to extract as much from the public coffer as possible is not a magic bullet that gets the public more for their money.