[pessimizer]

> How many are the examples when the federal government was more efficient (as in effect per unit money) than a commercial company?

The real question I think is whether there are examples where larger companies gain efficiencies, and if the most efficient way to do something is at a national or international scale, do you want to depend on a massive private companies (likely heavily subsidized) to do it?

That's not handing a public function to the private sector for the sake of finding efficiencies or to fund emergent innovation through competition, that's handing risk-free concessions to a cronies.