Bureaucracy Follow-Up

About a month ago I posted my frustrations about the silliness of excess bureacracy with regard to our plans to put a hot tub in a back yard to reward my wife for being fantastico! I outlined how the very process of rules based on fear rather than rules based on efficacy resulted in huge motivation to ignore the rules entirely. Here's the post, http://hopefulmuser.blogspot.com/2008/06/bureacracy.html
So, having now got a bid from a fully licensed contractor, with permits and the whole shebang, and a bid from a guy recommended by some friends I can tell you what the mark up is from bureacracy. The officially legitimate bid was almost exactly three times bigger than the illegitmate one (and more accurately met our needs, and took half as long to get, too).