Government is like the kid that starts pounding the square peg into the round hole, someone points out that's the wrong peg, and the kid just says "Too late; already started. Just need to pound it harder and you have to help!" When it screws up, it just forces everyone to use the screwed up system and we're stuck with broken toys. As you point out, when private industry screws up there is a short amount of pain and then they go out of business.No. Let's be serious, here. Governments don't **** up everything they do. They f up a lot of stuff and they're always inefficient, I'll grant. I'd be happy to see private industry make this work. But private industry manages to screw stuff up just as much as the government does; they just go out of business when they do and we forget about them.
I knew betamax was a bad example because of the prolonged fight. I had originally put HD-DVD, but I don't think anyone remembers it anymore even though that was just a few years ago Issues like this get worked out faster these days.