Let's Play Pretend

What would happen if we gave a private business $100 million locally within the confounds of one city to operate for a year?  Most local businesses will not see this much money in a lifetime.

The thought came to me when I was reading the news reports in regards to the budgets for the different localities.  Since I have been self-employed for the most part for the last four years for some strange reason it made me wonder what would happen if a local business was endowed with that kind of financing just once.  Do you think they would take the $100 million dollars and do a better job with the funds?  Well, yes I do.

First off, the local business would have come into a windfall they probably never would have imagined happening.  $100 million to run something and all they would have to do is collect money from people for the promise of services that will meet their needs.  We'll call him Mr. Businessman.  Hey Mr. Businessman I'm giving you a $100 million this year to run our schools and make our children the best and the brightest, make sure the streets are kept in good condition, keep our streets safe, make sure our city is presentable when people come to visit, ensure you have activities to keep our youth occupied, help our senior citizens they helped us, some of our citizens will fall on hard times make funds available to them, keep our water clean, pick up trash, oh and keep collecting money from the citizens so we can do this all over again next year.

Let's say Mr. Businessman was given $100 million to run his own business.  Let's just pretend he didn't have to pay taxes on that money.  Do you think the business would be run effectively?  What about competitively?   Can we tie his performance into whether or not he'll receive a $100 million the next year?

What do you think the impact would be on for-profit businesses if they receive funding for sitting around figuring out how much to ask for and approving it?  What do you think would happen if a local city contracted out the management of the whole city for $100 million?  Do you think we would see any difference in the way money was spent?