There are some infrastructure Governments must do because it provides equal opportunity setting the level playing field for all. For instance, Govt must fund schools otherwise all the great schools would eventually set their prices according to supply/demand so that bottom population can't afford them. This translates to situation where you can realize your potential only if you were lucky enough to be born to right parents.
Consider another scenario: A country has cities A, B and C. Assume that the govt doesn't do infrastructure like building roads. So a private company comes in and builds road between A and B because there is a net profit for them. One problem is obviously, now everyone must pay to use this road. If you are poor and can't pay then you can't use that road even if you need it go to hospital or send your kids to school or start your new business. Again, the result is that lack of infrastructure puts poor people at the severe disadvantage from making progress.
Further, private companies may decide never to build any road between B and C because their analysis shows C only has 1000 people and they can never recover their cost. Now, you can argue that 1000 people needs to suffer for making a bad choice about where to live and should not expect other people to pay up. However if you go in that line of thought, I bet most of the cities would never could have been connected. The crux of the issue is we as humans are only good at finding "local optimums" and it's impossible to see for us what could be "global optimum". What that means in nutshell is that we need to allow possibilities even though it may look venture of loss and foolishness because sometime those possibilities are what leads to huge outcomes.
Consider another scenario: A country has cities A, B and C. Assume that the govt doesn't do infrastructure like building roads. So a private company comes in and builds road between A and B because there is a net profit for them. One problem is obviously, now everyone must pay to use this road. If you are poor and can't pay then you can't use that road even if you need it go to hospital or send your kids to school or start your new business. Again, the result is that lack of infrastructure puts poor people at the severe disadvantage from making progress.
Further, private companies may decide never to build any road between B and C because their analysis shows C only has 1000 people and they can never recover their cost. Now, you can argue that 1000 people needs to suffer for making a bad choice about where to live and should not expect other people to pay up. However if you go in that line of thought, I bet most of the cities would never could have been connected. The crux of the issue is we as humans are only good at finding "local optimums" and it's impossible to see for us what could be "global optimum". What that means in nutshell is that we need to allow possibilities even though it may look venture of loss and foolishness because sometime those possibilities are what leads to huge outcomes.