Well, I appreciate all these informative posts but if it's true that no one can do these reconstruction contracts but Halliburton and Bechtel then why not just open up the bidding? If you *protectionists* are correct then there won't be any other bids. What am I missing here?
And, T, your opinion that allowing ohter companies into the game will end up costing more is an *opinion*. Competition tends bring prices down. Monopolies? Different story...
My small independent car rental company gives the franchises fits in my area because I don't have to support an upper tier of high priced CEO's. It's the same with lots of companies. The big corpoprations have within them their own forms of beurocracies with lots of dead wood. Xerox is a good example. Here is a big corporation that serves as a good example. They got too big, less hungry and the smaller guys took 'em a part. Now if the governemnt had *protected* them by not opening bidding to other corportaions then mnay of these smaller repro/document companies wouldn't have made it. But the governemnt didn't *protect* Xerox and now we have better products at competitive prices in that market.
Okay, so some company has the equipement to put out fires at well sites. This shouldn't give the right to have exclusive contracts for building housing, providing food, rebuilding water treatment plants, building hospital and schools, etc., etc. All they are going to end up doing is subbing out that work anyway and marking it up, just like general contractors do...
I'm not convinced T & t that limiting competion is anything but political.