>That's why I said it's uncertain at best, at which point you replied that you're certain. Obviously we can't look into alternate realities so I don't know why you'd reply that you'd be certain.

Because we have history. We've seen what happened previously to other developments the government didn't mess with, and the private market doesn't drop things like the government does. It doesn't find something new and then puts it on the backburner for years. The government does. All the WWII up to Apollo progress was then made up by decades of stagnation.

>I gave specific examples, fusion power

That has gone nowhere and will most likely never go anywhere.

>and space travel

Which was in the hands of private individuals before, until the government took over, and then they took care that nothing happened in it for decades, and only now we're rescuing it from the government's incompetent hands.

>"Governments destroyed the world"? It really feels like I'm getting into a political argument here with no clue what your politics are. Government and private industry aren't blood enemies in some epic battle of good vs evil, most of the time they work hand-in-hand to build a functioning society with pros and cons of each. The pros of government funding is that they'll fund advanced technology long before any private investor would.

The government is everyone's enemy. There are no pros to government funding other than cronyism and corruption.