Peter Thiel's Conservative Case for Big Government … At the Republican convention in Cleveland, billionaire investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel introduced … new ideas to his conservative audience … Thiel talked about the importance of public goods. He praised the big government projects of the mid-20th century, and lamented the fact that these seem to be a thing of the past.- Bloomberg

This speech from Thiel attracted a lot of attention, partially because Thiel is a very important technology entrepreneur.

Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook.

Ironically, Thiel is a self-proclaimed libertarian but a controversial one.

His speech shows why.

Curiously, it emphasized the need for government efficiency rather than private sector success.

When I moved to Cleveland, defense research was laying the foundations for the internet. The Apollo program was just about to put a man on the moon–and it was Neil Armstrong, from right here in Ohio. The future felt limitless.

But today our government is broken. Our nuclear bases still use floppy disks. Our newest fighter jets can't even fly in the rain. And it would be kind to say the government's software works poorly, because much of the time it doesn't even work at all.

That is a staggering decline for the country that completed the Manhattan project. We don't accept such incompetence in Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government.

It is probably true that the US would function better with a more efficient government.

But it is hard to imagine how government can be made more efficient.