Unfettered Competition May Just as Easily Lead to Lobbyists as It Does to Excellence

A couple of years ago the University of Chicago lost its exclusive no bid contracts for two famous national labs when the Energy Department decided to open the bidding process to private companies.  Did U. of C. find a way to strive harder to keep the contracts (which had been assured by the fiat of former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert)?  Nope.  They hired a lobbyist to leverage support in the U.S. Congress.  If you've got lobbyists, you don't need to work harder to compete and to produce excellent results.  Lobbyists are to competitive edge what tenure is to job security.