[hippich]

So problem, as I understand, is that it requires significant amount of capital to get going for independent company, and they might go under if big company cut them. And the big companies undercut independent ones so later they could raise price.

So I had this question - what if state would commit to 10-20 years worth of contracts with some kind of locked in rate (adjusted for inflation or something), not just one off contract? This way independent company would have more motivation to do major capital investment, and big companies will not be able to undercut small players on one off job, only to get all next ones for 20% more..

Hopefully this makes sense.

[programmingpol]

I've floated this idea around but what I found out was that it's against our state's laws to have such open contracts. Changing the state law would be difficult (road builders have a big voice in state government). We also, by law, have to accept the lowest bid that meets specs, even if that means higher prices in the long run. Championing accepting higher bids would be difficult come election time. The attack ads would read, "Politician A wants to give his buddies a sweet-heart deal at the expense of the taxpayer."

It's a very difficult problem.

[intended]

Remember that all such plans have been tried in our lifetimes alone.

Someone can easily run a campaign against such a system By saying it’s anti competition, or drives complacency.

In a meta sense you are almost always fighting against the current local equilibrium.

You will always need someone to inspect and call out BS behavior.

This means good policing and investigating and reporting.