One could also argue the opposite, that commercializing an invention is much more obvious, faster and WAY CHEAPER step than inventing the tech need for it? And I agree with you that Government is a terrible entrepreneur, but that's actually a good thing, because its huge budgets and the lack of interest in making money out of it, is exactly what keeps pure science per science's sake projects alive. Lots of R&D that government finances has completely different goals than entrepreneurs would, like getting competitive advantages over foreign players or solving strategically important problems. No business person in their right mind would ever finance flying a man to moon, or research on distributed, fault-tolerant communication system for post-nuclear war world, nor anyone would be able to predict ahead all technologies that could come out of that research, it's impossible to do. So we need both steps for progress, both the government trowing tax payers money on seemingly silly R&D, and entrepreneurs looking for new ways to monetize it later.
> One could also argue the opposite, that commercializing an invention is much more obvious, faster and WAY CHEAPER step than inventing the tech need for it?
Not necessarily, or at least it doesn't readily compare. Sure, if I first have to develop all the physics dating back to Newton on my own, building a piece of electronics would be very expensive.
But let's say some researcher at a university discovers the field effect that could be useful for semiconductors. That researcher's lifetime salary will likely be far smaller than the cost required to actually bring their findings into the actual microprocessors.
> So we need both steps for progress, both the government trowing tax payers money on seemingly silly R&D, and entrepreneurs looking for new ways to monetize it later.
If we're talking about massive infrastructure projects, I agree that there's no one else but the government to do it. Whether those projects are warranted is a different matter.
However, if we're just talking about university R&D, it's not clear to me that if it wasn't for the government that it couldn't be financed. A university attracts students (and thus financing) in large parts because of its research.
