Private sector has corrective forces

Bill Brennan, Las Vegas

Thursday, Aug. 25, 2011 | 2 a.m.

In Friday’s Las Vegas Sun, a different Bill Brennan concludes that neither the private sector nor government has a monopoly over the other regarding productive or wasteful management services.

But, in his letter to the editor, he overlooks the effect of the stock market as a judge of a company’s performance. Wasteful operations reduce profits that, in turn, affect stock prices. But there is no such corrective mechanism for government.

There also is a larger issue to be considered. The two projects he mentioned are products of different time periods and different regulatory climates. Today’s rules include environmental considerations that greatly affect building decisions and construction costs. You could not build Hoover Dam today.