Also, your tax dollars are absolutely being handed over to private organisations in one way or another. Either through subsidies, tax breaks, welfare, economic initiatives, or direct investment.
Yes but you've missed the point. Those billions have turned out to be a net positive for the world. But at the time, why should someone dying of cancer fund a literal moonshot? Why should we antagonize the nuclear armed Soviets over a dead rock? Why this, why that?
> Also, your tax dollars are absolutely being handed over to private organisations in one way or another.
Then it incurs the same penalties! The opportunity cost argument still applies. "Why did we fund this business over that business?"
The majority of private businesses have no exclusive government support. They are free to fail with zero impact to society. This means their apps are crappier but no one had to suffer to make it happen.
The Soviets sent the first rocket to space in 1961. Twenty-one years later the first private space company launched its rocket using repurposed government technology.
There is no doubt that governments can do things. They are, after all, just groups of people; the same as private enterprises.
But while the Soviets were launching rockets, their citizens waited hours in line for their day's rations.
"The accepted norm is that the Soviet woman daily spends two hours in line, seven days a week, daily going through double the gauntlet that the American housewife undergoes at her supermarket once, maybe twice a week." Hedrick Smith.
When you marshal the entirety of society towards a goal you can accomplish great things. But always at a cost.
When a private business makes a terrible app, I can sleep soundly at night knowing I never gave anything up for that app's creation. If I see a beautiful, well-constructed, publicly funded app, I might be pleased at the attention to detail and admire the construction of the thing. But I have to wonder, what did I give up in return? How many people with broken arms waited in an over-burdened system for the prestige of a beautiful website?
The problem isn't that the government can or can not. Its the choice to do or do not. Its the opportunity cost to the society that poisons the government's action.