&gt; Complaining about this is essentially the same as complaining about soup-kitchen volunteers. Surely there are plenty of people that would love to be paid for that job, but we have all these smug elitist volunteers doing the jobs for free.<p>This comparison is inaccurate – soup kitchen volunteers are not performing a <i>complete job which is being bid for</i>. This underbid is more analogous to if a local government center asking for bids to serve a meeting of 500 people, and a local soup kitchen bidding $1 for the contract because they are essentially giving away free food. They then end up supplying the meeting with 500 bowls of great chili, and everyone is happy.<p>If the soup kitchen started doing this every time the government center issued a bid, the local restaurants would never make any money <i>from the government center</i>. This is not to say that they would never make money. But it is legitimate for an average restaurant in the area to be worried by the soup kitchen&#x27;s actions, and view it as a potential devaluer of their product.