Actually, private contracting is also a sham.
Why?
We just have idiots writing the rules.
Used to be that favorites were hired for the job. That could be a good or bad thing. In business, you recommend a good contractor to do the job. But in both business and gubbermint, sometimes you hire the favorite because of a kickback (like a funky fountain in your back yard that just HAPPENED to be an "extra" the guy had).
To fix that, they ruled that the lowest bid would be chosen no matter what. Sounds good, right?
Well, lemme put it this way, if contractors A, B and C all bid on installing a new kitchen, A at $40,000, B at $42,000 and C at $16,000, what would you do?
Government hired C and either had to pay them $80,000 in the end because of "unforseen complications causing delays", or ended up cooking dinners on a Hibachi grill in the middle of the floor.
Now compare that to offering incentives like "finishing early" bonuses and the like. The interchange of routes 4 and 17 in Bergen County NJ was finished months ahead of schedule because of this. Unfortunately, the bonus was obnoxiously large, so even good things need to have some oversight....
I guess the message is clear. You can never address a problem by simply stating a general term or means. Simply saying "private business is better to handle blah" is too general and has many examples to the contrary (insurance being one of the BIGGEST).
So what we need to do is develop some means of making a combination that will check and balance and come out ahead of both.