It all comes down to the government intervention paradox: whenever something bad happens, people ask for intervention, which implies the only entity willing to do such things, the government. The sad part is, to my knowledge, this intervention never works out for the best. When is the last time you heard the phrase, "thank goodness the government intervened! It did such a good job, and now everyone's happy!" with regard to the economy?
Let's see: the GI Bill, the Internet, Social Security, NASA's and DOD's funding of computer and semiconductor R&D all seem to have worked out fairly well. Not perfectly, but better than their non-existence would have.
I think helveticaman must have developed his own networking stack and routing architecture, not this government sponsored crap we all use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tcp/ip
