The “direction” of that efficiency is always toward profit and against the very laboring class that makes the product the owners use for profit.

With a collective, co-op, employee owned, or government run industry - one can edict the various rates and ratios.

Look at the US energy company “eversource.”

Posting huge profits in an industry directly related to life and health and yet, doubled one of its rates this year. DOUBLED. Why? “Fuel costs”.

Fuel costs which have fallen.

With a gov run electric system, people will game based on votes. Not shareholder ROI.

Plus, people have a very “interesting” history when they disagree with a gov. From protest to removal of heads from bodies...

It’s not as simple when corporations are involved.

They are more evil than any of history’s evil men.

If corporations are accepted to be "evil" (and we have lots of examples of mega-corporations that haven't held to "don't be evil"), then simply taxing them and having them continue to be evil doesn't make a lot of sense. Perhaps it would be better to abolish corporate structures and find a new paradigm with greater personal responsibility with small companies more responsive to customers and their customers' values? If people feel responsible for their actions, then they are more likely to "not be evil", instead of being a raindrop in the flood that believes they should just do as they are told. A large part of the US economy is small business, small businesses can live by their values instead of the inexorable pull towards more profit. I'm not saying all small businesses do, but it's more of a personal choice of their values and their customers' values rather than a large tendency to "become evil with more profit and seeking monopolies".

Completely agree. In my opinion a solid start is worker-owned co-ops.

Question is if they allocate it in ways the democratic majority wants it to be allocated.

Or skip the middle man and let people keep their dollars and spend them how they want?

How do you decide on the path the road should be built on? Everybody building a few feet individually?

Most people are not debating the building of roads, and most of those are at state and local levels anyways. The bigger debate is on the actual federal budget, which has ballooned over time into all sorts of items which cannot be assumed to be uncontroversial or even generally agreed on by a majority of citizens.

A lot of us would prefer if the federal government actually did allocate some more of its funds to maintaining the roads and infrastructure that we have; that would be a great start.

They probably agree that A road has to be built, but exactly WHERE gives you about as many opinions as 5hwre are participants in the discussion. This requires some approach for structuring the decision making. Representative democracy is one. And yes, for such hands on topics it is relatively simple. But "big topics" have equal problem with many opinions, where some form of consensus has to be found.