There are many reasons why the free market products are generally superior in cost, quality, and turnaround time than what government produces.
One reason is you’re much more careful what you do with your assets and your money than what you do with someone else’s assets and money. A free enterprise is careful how is spends its own money and uses its own assets. No one in government owns any of the assets government uses and government doesn’t earn it’s money, it forces money from other people. So there’s little incentive in government to maximize quality, minimize coat, and turnaround time. That is why haphazard quality, high cost, and long turnaround time is a generally accurate description of how government works when it ventures beyond what government should really be doing which is mainly protecting the freedom of its citizens.
The Post Office is an obvious example. Nobody owns the post office building and that is why they’re generally run down and dilapidated. The DMV doesn’t care how long you wait and doesn’t care if you’re satisfied with their service once you do get waited on. That’s government. No accountability.
If Walmart subcontracts schlock then at some point Walmart will pay the price and will be out-competed by someone else who pays better attention. In the free market if you fail, you lose and if you don’t fix it, you’re out. In government if you fail, you get more money and a bigger bureaucracy. No reason or accountability.
I understand you philosophical point. I am trying to share some actual empirical experience.
Government knows it does not take care of things, either with out-sourced maintenance or their own crews. They therefore often build things a little more durable.
WalMart builds shopping center space for their own use. They build it very solidly built and sound. Across the street, the private shopping center developer, who is often not going to build and hold, often builds crap.
All of this has little to do with the contractor who builds what is on the plans and in the contract. The designer sets the standard for much of this and he designs what he is paid to design with a service life and materials as dictated by his user.
Over the last 15 years I have watched as the military went through more design-build trying to mimic the private sector with one goal in mind — drive the cost down 30%. Quality during that process has been all over the ball park. Delivery times have been up and down as well. Durability has not improved but lack of standardization has actually made maintenance harder to maintain for military bases.
Quality on construction in general, is much higher than it was 30 years ago given the same item to item comparison and this is regardless of the buyer. I base this opinion on hundreds of millions in projects over almost 50 years.