We've had tremendous innovation in the medical field - just look at life expectancies over the last few decades. Thiel's argument on transportation is also weak

We've had tremendous innovation in the medical field - just look at life expectancies over the last few decades. Thiel's argument on transportation is also weak - cars/planes haven't gotten faster but they've gotten much more efficient. The biggest innovation failure lies with the government. And governments can certainly test things out and 'fail' as we can in consumer Internet. In fact these days, almost every government policy seems to fail! This is probably due to the cumbersome nature of the democratic process - whereas entrepreneurs can quickly disrupt inefficient systems and rely on the market to validate them.