The reason I mentioned carbon fiber wasn't specific to SpaceX but because it's a good example of something which had substantial up-front R&D costs which were largely paid by government investment to get it to the point where a company has a commercially-viable path to using it.

There are a ton of similar examples — microchips being the most common here — and the point wasn't that everyone should develop their stack from scratch but rather that the original claim that scientific and engineering progress depends on current US levels of inequality just doesn't fit the history. Most people who aren't committed to a particular political position tend to agree that you need both and in the U.S. we've certainly seen a lot of successes from the combined approach, as well as educational levels of inefficiency when the incentives are misaligned.