Companies doing space travel don’t care about exploration. They care about being the ones to capitalize on space first.
that's fine - because exploration is a useful side-effect of "capitalizing" space.
The problem with gov't funded public works projects is that everyone involved knows it's gov't funded, and adds their own margin on top. Not to mention the land acquisition gets more expensive over time - both purely due to inflation, as well as the idea that the land owner could squeeze more juice out the later the project is in (after all, if you're the sole "hold-up", you could squeeze the gov't for your land at above market rates and they'd have to pay or lose the entire project!).
It is really a result of freedom of the individuals in america (vs their gov't) compared to places like china.
You don't get to overcharge for your work as a "contractor" in china - you work for the state-owned company that employs you at a fixed wage.
The land is always something the gov't can just take as imminent domain, and pays you what the gov't thinks is fair compensation (which, of course, is going to be lower than market cost, as you are forced to accept it).
Lastly, those "pesky" environmental reviews in the US doesn't really exist in china. At best they get rubber stamped.
While the result of china's infrastructure development is definitely impressive, those who had to eat the hidden cost exist, but is powerless to stop it. Hopefully they also get to enjoy the fruits of the infrastructure, and that it outweighs the cost paid by them.
America won the world wars by being an industrial powerhouse who could get things built in large quantity. I think that is no longer the case. To go further, it indicates a strategic weakness in national defense. Japan's warships were technologically superior to the American's. The German tank' specs were better than the Allies. But they lost on the number games. I feel like if a fight broke out between the US and China right now, we may see the same thing happen again, except this time, the US is the one playing the "few elite" card while China has the industrial and manufacturing power to swarm us with "good enough" war engines. And history has shown twice which strategy would win a war.
luckily, nukes exist today, and this is no longer a volume problem. The all-out war scenario is one where humanity dies out, revert back to the stone age.
In a regional conflict, such as a taiwan invasion, this might play out as you described. But then in such a regional conflict, the "elite" forces of the US is more useful imho.
> But when used as resistance against the public good and overall progress
There's shades of grey there, because what constitutes public good and overall progress? But you may be right that there's more middlemen these days that are just not pulling their weight for what they output. Like ticket-clipping, where they just add a margin and pass on the work down the chain, and yet contribute nothing.