> Private capital, during the same time frame, gave us google search and maps, smartphones, movies on demand and god knows how much other stuff
That's an extremely lazy and superficial analysis.
Where did the foundational ingredients for each of those things come from? Computers, networks, video compression, touchscreens, materials, ... heck, even pagerank, and a large fraction of the breakthroughs in ML/AI (till very recently) have come from academia -- through publicly funded research. Companies are very good at solving the "last mile" to apply technologies towards making products, but don't typically have the vision or the wherewithal to pursue deeper innovations.
Public funds for research is a tiny fraction of the funds that the government spends. There are trillions wasted elsewhere that shows that overall it is terrible with spending money productively.
All the same, the reason you have maps on your smartphone can be traced to GPS satellites and ultimately the space program itself, funded by the government.
Yeah yeah, SpaceX exists now, decades after all the very tough and very expensive initial work.
Nobody is denying that. The point is that the government is not lacking for funding but poorly spending the money it already has.
Imagine how much more we could have now if the space program budget was more than a fraction of a percent. That won't be fixed by just giving more money to the govt.
That's an extremely lazy and superficial analysis.
Where did the foundational ingredients for each of those things come from? Computers, networks, video compression, touchscreens, materials, ... heck, even pagerank, and a large fraction of the breakthroughs in ML/AI (till very recently) have come from academia -- through publicly funded research. Companies are very good at solving the "last mile" to apply technologies towards making products, but don't typically have the vision or the wherewithal to pursue deeper innovations.