<The operation of the free market is not a matter of blind faith, but constant observation of facts. Almost our entire civilization is based on privately-developed technologies and services. Government may have accelerated certain areas, but it has also certainly retarded many others

I agree fully with this, and the last sentence is essentially what I have been saying all along. Industrial policies, while often wasteful, advance technolgical development. For instance, one of the major spinoffs of Reagan's SDI was new oil drilling technology. The nuclear power plants you constantly praise would not exist without the manhattan project. You can say it would eventually have happened in the private sector but it's a hollow claim. In the free market money flows where the highest profit and the least short term risk exists. This is the reason we need industrial policies to fund high risk, long term ROI projects. The free market is truly magnificent but cannot do all the things a civilization needs to exist on its own.

The rest of your post pointing out when the free market and government operate simutaneously and the free market is far more efficient is true but irrevelant to my original point, which was that government works in areas where the free market does not because the free market is too risk adverse.