The poster you responded to, was suggesting that a decent designer could be matched to the project before the majority of the work takes place.

This makes sense.

If you have a competition - the amount of effort expended is far greater, and much of that combined effort will have been spent for nothing.

--

There's a commonly held assumption that design takes only a little bit of effort, and that it's so remarkably fun that little or no reward is required by its practitioners.

This assumption is wrong, and even if it wasn't .. what's the point in creating a design that stands a very good chance of not being used?