The number of private actors capable of acting in a space has not been that small since like the 50s, if ever. You're trying to equate this to corporate cases l

The number of private actors capable of acting in a space has not been that small since like the 50s, if ever. You're trying to equate this to corporate cases like Apple and Google in smartphone OSes, but this is far broader. This is the entire economy. I feel like you're thinking just about corporations, which is a different conversation IMO. You can even look at space exploration as an example since when we talk about rich people everyone thinks of Elon now. There are so many space companies started with private investment. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit, Armadillo Aerospace, Rocket lab, Polaris, a planetary resources, and more that I've never heard of. That's way more than 2 or 3. I think humanity is at its best when it can organize into small groups working on big things that can be made available and/or useful to everyone else and that's just really hard to do without money. I don't want to spend my time allocating capital. Randomly assigning the job to as many of those interested in doing so as possible seems like the best solution, with augmentation from the government of course.