> The private sector has historically been the one that had sane and logical business practices minimizing risk, while government had the funding necessary to take on large, risky projects for the good of their constituents

I'm not a "free market trumps all" person by any means, but is this really true? Xerox PARC, GE, IBM, Ford all come to mind. Sure, still the government was involved in quite a few of these, but I wouldn't say these companies were minimizing risk by any means.