Your "greater good" is not that great. Let me give some counterexamples:
- Sanitation: it's still done with public funding, no free marker will ever build a new sewer or water treatment plant.
- Medicine & vaccines: they're still developed by public funding and the incentives are the prestige and altruism of the researchers, not their income.
- Electricity: public investments everywhere.
- Roads & rail: No free market will ever create a highway, or even a secondary road. May I laugh about the rail "free market" / private investments?
- Food safety: achieved with laws and public funded inspection agencies.
You may argue that the free market expanded the internet. It seems small, doesn't it?
To be clear, I agree with you. I was sarcastically hinting at slavery to highlight that increases in productivity may not actually be for the greater good.
- Sanitation: it's still done with public funding, no free marker will ever build a new sewer or water treatment plant.
- Medicine & vaccines: they're still developed by public funding and the incentives are the prestige and altruism of the researchers, not their income.
- Electricity: public investments everywhere.
- Roads & rail: No free market will ever create a highway, or even a secondary road. May I laugh about the rail "free market" / private investments?
- Food safety: achieved with laws and public funded inspection agencies.
You may argue that the free market expanded the internet. It seems small, doesn't it?