This only exchanges some overlords for other ones. Grant committees get hijacked by special interests all the time and Important Bigwigs Who May Not Be Crossed

This only exchanges some overlords for other ones. Grant committees get hijacked by special interests all the time and Important Bigwigs Who May Not Be Crossed are not exclusive to the private sector. They mostly gravitate towards seats of power, and if those seats move to some ministry instead of a corporate headquarters, so will they. Looking at the sorry state of science funding (public grants that reward mediocre projects from established teams and publish-or-perish mentality), I think the result would be the same ossified structure with massive power concentrated in a few hands. Perhaps a lot of output, but not much quality. At the same time, most Western governments fight against the unstoppable juggernaut of aging societies. We will have serious problems financing healthcare and social care in a decade or two, depending on the precise shape of the demographic curve in your country. As a result, I think the opposite will take place: privatization of more and more services in an attempt to wean them off subsidies and get them to self-support somehow. We can already see the growing power of the "grey voting bloc" here in Czechia. Having a public pension system (yet another idea that Americans may find appealing), more and more efforts of the politicians go towards appeasing interests of the pensioners at the cost of everything and everyone else. Doing anything else is a recipe for electoral wipeout.