Like I said, you are definitely confusing things: socialism/communism/modern China/NK-style dictatorships.

All states provide services, or they wouldn't exist.

Who do you think is going to develop technology without market solutions in place?

There was an HN article recently about Wifi, which was developed by Australian government researchers at a famous research institution now being dismantled on the same faulty capitalist/neocolonialist reasoning you are peddling. The internet, wifi... many interesting modern developments have been government funded.

It's the difference between SpaceX and NASA: both are funded through taxpayers, but SpaceX has competitive pressure to provide better services at a better price.

No, SpaceX and NASA are very different. SpaceX is a for-profit business, whereas NASA is a national (some would say international) research institution. For example, a friend of mine from Australia is currently doing an internship at NASA's JPL facility in the field of applied chemical geology with a pure research goal.

China [...] growth has largely come through increased liberalization of the economy

You are incorrect. There is liberalization, but effectively the government still runs all the roads, train networks, airports, communications infrastructure, education and media.

hoarding?

You know, medicine or food or real estate or whatnot. We were not talking about cars.

We have abundant evidence...

{{citation-needed}}

What in your view allows a government service to provide these benefits (by using taxpayer money to provision them) while giving people the money to buy those services directly would not?

If I give someone $2 a week, even if there are 20,000 people in a town, how long will it take them to coherently organize savings amongst themselves build a $2M road to the provincial capital? Some of them are leaving, some of them are old, some of them ride bicycles, some of them don't drive, others prefer the train, there are rumours of a new train line. Sometimes a decision just needs to be made. And if every village builds a direct road to the capital, is that really a desirable network topology? No. There are concerns at play that those affected cannot or will not have the time to research and execute. Whereas, history teaches us that a commercial actor, which you propose, would by definition cut nearly all available corners to prioritize profit, whilst working to establish an effective (explicit or implicit) monopoly on the sector, leaving portions of the people underserved. Oh, and they'd be tollways.

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I can't imagine the nightmare that a government-provisioned Google would be, for example.

Straw man.

the service they provide (space exploration) is largely identical.

Did you read my comment? It's chalk and cheese.

the market is more capitalist than it was 50 years ago

Instead of discussing the point you make a tangential point then essentially falsely assert that because the market is more capitalist all the good stuff comes from capitalism. Having a discussion with you is completely insane.

You think under UBI people would use their limited income to hoard medicine?

I was discussing the relative benefits of a service-based model.

The idea that some central planner knows better than people what they need is the height of arrogance.

You are conflating providing essential services with providing everything. The scope was: food/water, shelter, transportation, health care, electricity/information.

Capitalism does not automatically imply corruption or inefficiency.

No, but it implies a profit motive which usually suggests a few things, the foremost being chiefly crap service for everyone in low population density areas that isn't easily serviced.

The Japanese rail system...

... is terrible unless you want to get from a major town to a major town. I recently spent 2 days stuck there trying to get between point A and point B along the coast. Why? As you say...

it's entirely privatized