[ThenAsNow]

I am taking your comment as a concise way to imply significant inefficiency and poor efficacy at NASA. If I am misreading, please let me know.

Such polar implications about the efficacy of private vs. government (whether in R&D or other domains) represent reality poorly, and in fact your example contradicts itself with the enormous amounts of beneficial R&D NACA and NASA did and which industry built upon. This doesn't excuse the extremely wasteful behavior of NASA (e.g., SLS); only to say that you can't paint it all with the same brush of "wasteful, inefficient, government".

It is necessary to have capable people acting with good judgment to do "good and effective" work. Neither government nor industry have a monopoly on people of mediocre effectiveness or judgment. It is true that the government doesn't have market pressure to call it on the carpet for wastefulness. But that's the same attribute that enables it to undertake moonshots or do hard, expensive R&D that benefits society as a whole.

[eloff]

That's fair. I don't mean to imply that the public sector can't do anything well - just look at the Canadian health care system vs the US one - hardly perfect, but substantially better on the whole. However, the public sector often has less pressure to do things efficiently, or they have additional requirements, like we see with NASA splitting contracts up among various states for political reasons.

I don't think semiconductors would be better handled by the public sector - even if one could somehow get political support for that, which seems very unlikely in the US.

[gambiting]

>>just look at the Canadian health care system vs the US one - hardly perfect, but substantially better on the whole.

The thing is, you say "on the whole" but I am sure you mean one or two parameters. I am not from US and I abhore the monstrosity that is the US healthcare system, but no one here can deny that US does have the absolute best healthcare in the world - as long as you can afford it. No wonder people from all over the world come over to US for difficult operations, because they usually get access to the best techniques, best doctors and best equipment. The only issue with all of this is that it costs a tonne of money and it's ruining the American society.

I don't think it's difficult to see that other sectors are the same - there are things that NASA excels at, and there are things which almost any space-oriented startup can do better. But it always depends on what sort of thing is a priority for you.

[ThenAsNow]

> I don't think semiconductors would be better handled by the public sector - even if one could somehow get political support for that, which seems very unlikely in the US.

Again, take a look at the SEMATECH example discussed above. I understand it to be considered a successful undertaking on the whole. For a present-day example along similar lines, see DARPA's Electronics Resurgence Initiative ("ERI").