Short-term versus long-term gains. Businesses have the short term covered, but they're rarely going in on high-risk/low-reward (monetarily) research. So supply

Short-term versus long-term gains. Businesses have the short term covered, but they're rarely going in on high-risk/low-reward (monetarily) research. So supply and demand can get stuck at these local maxima. Central planning can think longer term. Maybe it doesn't pay off, but sometimes it does. And when it does, it can shake us free of that maximum. This works, and is why Bell Labs and its peers existed. For reasons I don't fully understand, they stopped doing this, largely. Maybe because it's difficult to quantify those long-term gains. Finally, those scientists get to choose where they are employed. So if the private sector wants them to do this work, they can hire them.