Oh, don't interfere with the beautiful ways of ideology ;-)

But seriously, government programs are in great danger of failing because _all_ big projects are in great danger of failing. I think you would easily find evidence of that.

Taking a centralised decision on how to spend over a trillion dollars within a year or two, allowing no time for readjustment or seeing what actually works, is a very high risk business, no matter if it's government or anyone else who does it.

Granted, a lot of that money is not going to be spent on new projects but will be used to speed up existing ones.

There has been great success in large-scale projects in the past. It's just that back in the 1950's and earlier when they were spending vast amounts of money on single projects, people had been talking about them for over a decade.

Perhaps today we don't need 10 years to come up with a plan on how to build a network of highways, perhaps all our computers and better analytical models help greatly in predictions. However, it's hard to tell if software is giving you a good prediction until you begin getting results and I don't think many people would have felt comfortable betting on Deep Blue before it publicly won its first game of chess.

That's at least a valid argument. I just don't think it's a good idea to base opinions on government programs on any work of fiction. Many treat Atlas the way the religious right treats the Bible.

It's called a thought experiment.