SpaceX does sell a solid chunk of their launches to US government departments, but those departments save on those launches quite a bit - so American taxpayer b

SpaceX does sell a solid chunk of their launches to US government departments, but those departments save on those launches quite a bit - so American taxpayer benefits there. It's true that SpaceX was helped by NASA after they got their first successful launches of Falcon-1, that help was important and allowed skipping Falcon-5. However that's the regular way American taxpayers - represented by those government departments - operate: they grow markets of new products and services, and then both benefit from new offerings and receive tax from them, while public has more chances for personal enrichment. In some sense, yes, it's American taxpayer who makes all that - including favorable legal environment - possible; on the other hand, investors are the standard way, the means how that is done. It's odd to see taxpayers and investors as completely opposing entities.