That's not how investments work. If someone invests $100,000 in your startup, and you IPO for $10 billion, you don't just pay back $100,000 and call it even. The way I see it, the federal government should own basically half of California.
I don't understand why you think it's instructive to compare government investments to venture capital. The government engages in plenty of investments, and none of them operate that way.
The fact that government makes an investment on favorable terms does not change the underlying nature of the investment. The point is to challenge the self aggrandizing west coast narrative of rugged individualists setting out and building civilization from the desert. In reality, the west coast was an investment of the taxpayers of the east coast. Without that investment, California would be Mexico, or perhaps a private colony--a wholly owned subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase.
Its not an investment, its a public good. By definition, that is how they work. You're using a very flawed anology.
Parkland is common public good, and most of the west is publicly accessible. And where it is not, it is most often military in use. Or, it has been set aside for rich people to benefit from.
Think about who really gets the value of Central Park in NYC vs Who can afford a home closeby.
Right, but this is a minor subset of your initial premise. And even in that subset, outside of water/mineral rights[1], you are talking edge cases. A road is a quasi-public-good until there is a traffic jam. Central park is a quasi-public good until it is occupied by a permit holder, etc.
Second, The public policy rationale for these "investments" is to provide quasi-public good as services. For example, the public ownership of military installations is not a "public good" in terms of property (you cant take a walk at area 51) but defense is a quasi-public good (avail at ~zero marginal cost to the broad public).
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Its important to just keep some perspective. Public goods and "profitable investments" (eg, rent seeking ones) are quite distinct concepts. And in part we entrust assets subject to massive rent-seeking to be held in common ownership "for the public good" expressly to avoid exploitation their rent seeking potential.
[1] The exploitation of water/mineral rights relating to public land are often well trodden areas of legal and policy debate, and span levels of abstraction (state/local/regional etc).
The west coast was populated by the taxpayers of the east coast in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of another power. Those "favorable terms" weren't charity; they were an investment that has paid off.
Because the government chooses not to monetize and propertize them that way. In a very real sense, the government has ownership rights to a massive amount of valuable stuff and writes it off their books every year.
The easiest example is how logging rights in federal lands are basically given away for near-free rather than sold at a market rate for a profit to the government.
