[_2d30]

You could make a claim about the internet which would be reasonable but that is also a miniscule portion of what the federal government has done with our money so using a teeny tiny example is more of an exception that proves the rule type of thing. The amount we spend on the Federal government and what we get back for it is crazy bad. The problem is NOT the federal government having too little money. It's a huge proportion of GDP, especially compared to when our government was vastly more effective. The problem is that the institutions that make up our government are dramatically incompetent and squander the massive amounts of funding we give it.

> That investment included a modest (6-7 figure, depending on how your count) investment in a project on digital libraries years before private capital caught on. The private investors were rewarded handsomely for their investment in that digital library, but we, the taxpayers, were not.

Definitionally, if private investors made money, so did the taxpayers:

1) The investors are taxpayers who benefitted.

2) The investors returns were taxed and all future economic activity that came from it was taxed.

3) Societally we got the "digital libraries".