If you can hire an employee for less than you are paying for an contractor (include your HR time, payroll, taxes, other paperwork) there should be some semblance of a balance.

If you hire a Consultant who doesn't care about you succeeding; then he is selling his future short. Any good employee or Consultant will be absolutely willing to do his part to see you succeed; as that leads to him succeeding.

There are bad employee's as well as bad consultants; let's not try and make it black and white.

One important point is that consultants can be a way to buy a slice of a skill set or experience level that you couldn't afford to own outright, in the same way that Berkshire Hathaway benefits from buying slices of companies on the public markets that it couldn't own 100%.