[VLM]

The human labor cost of processing a contract goes up at a more than linear rate with the size of the company.

Meanwhile, "managing" contracts is almost as expensive as managing employees.

At some point having an accounting dept manage 10K contracts is simply impossible.

Its a labor and control fraud limitation not technological.

[IIIIIIIIIIII]

As I said, I think the focus for the points of this discussion is the effect. No doubt everybody acts logically, I didn't suggest that everybody in those companies just lost their mind. This goes long the same lines as "For evil to triumph, all that is required is for good men to respond rationally to incentives." (so here it is the loss of ever more "market" in the "market economy" that we get as an effect, and it's questionable we get it back in economies of scale, judging by the popularity of Dilbert cartoons).