State vs Private Founding

There is the common wisdom the private sector is way more efficient when managing investments. This may be true when it comes to low risk projects. But whenever a high risk project is considered, the private sector typically stays as far out as possible. And I do mean very risky projects, or projects which do not have return on investment quantified at all.

Examples? Columbus sailing to America. Or Magellan circumventing the globe. It s right the oceans were ruled by Dutch and British merchants, but that was only AFTER sailing routes had been established and it became a regular business to build ships and start trading with far away nations.

Landing man on the Moon. Or even the International Space Station. True, there is SpaceX now, but firstly it is an exception and secondly there is a regular business to launch payloads to the orbit.

The particle accelerator at CERN. Or the tokamaks. All are state funded. Is nuclear fusion not promising? It is, but the payback horizon is just too far for the greedy private capital to consider it attractive.

I feel we have too much "efficiency" in play. And too little true courage and desire to work on grand things. The World's most valuable company - Apple - is it really after a big change for the civilization or is it just trying to maximize profits on selling stuff that glitters?

More and more I'm trying to find out if collectively we could do better. Better from the perspective of grand things that matter: energy, pollution (air, water, soil, sound), education, wealth distribution. It seems most of those are in the hands of politicians, helped to some extent by philanthropists. Businesses do not seem to be interested.