Is there more legitimacy/recourse to pay another company for services than to hire an employee (with the skill to back it up) to do the same work in-house? That level of indirection sounds inefficient...
Sometimes there is, yes. If you pay another company for services, it's strictly business. Hire an employee, and all sorts of primate emotions, politics, laws and so forth come into the picture. Sometimes that can more than outweigh the cost of the extra level of indirection.
On the bright side, this is one of the things that stops the entire economy being swallowed up by a handful of megacorporations.
