There is something to it. E.g. the government telecoms monopoly in Norway in the 1980s spent way more on research than the present day commercialized Telenor. H

There is something to it. E.g. the government telecoms monopoly in Norway in the 1980s spent way more on research than the present day commercialized Telenor. However they were not necessarily innovative in products, but they did develop a lot of the original cell phone technologies which got later widely used. I am not necessarily a fan of monopolies, but I think we owe it to ourselves to understand the tradeoffs and consider alternatives. E.g. how do you do basic research if there is so aggressive competition and shareholder look only 3 months ahead. It is also worth nothing that the case of ULA isn't necessarily a case of merely monopoly but also how how that monopoly works. E.g. being a monopoly shouldn't require a cost plus contract. Secondly GM and the other big three are certainly not monopolies but have not proven any more capable than ULA in competing with Tesla in creating an electric car. SpaceX is beating lots of other rocket companies which aren't necessarily monopolies. I think it is easy to overstate how bad ULA is when perhaps it is really about how good SpaceX is ;-) Also remember the Russians also operated government monopolies for rocket building and yet managed to build considerably cheaper rockets than the Americans. I think there is a lot more to this issue than whether it is prive/public or a monopoly.