Government lays out the foundation upon which innovation can take place. They build out shared infrastructure and provide research funding to universities, whic

Government lays out the foundation upon which innovation can take place. They build out shared infrastructure and provide research funding to universities, which private corporations get to use to create profitable things in the real world. Using your examples, Ford wouldn't have been successful without the massive government investments in our roads, and the internet companies wouldn't have been successful without all the publicly funded computer science research over the past half century. We're probably overdue for some wide-scale government investments in renewable tech, and I'd personally love to see a substantial government initiative to not only modernize our digital infrastructure (the average household internet connection in the U.S. is ~7 Mbps), but really push it into the future, whether it's via fiber, public wifi blankets over dense urban areas, cell towers, satellites, or some combination thereof.