If we depended on bureaucratic bean counters to approve purchases of super computers and compute clusters, we’d be in the same situation as we are in FEMA and N95 masks.
I think capitalism is very exploitative of workers, very inefficient with resources, and detrimental to the environment. But I also believe that centrally planned public systems are inflexible and often backwards thinking. That getting anything new done inside a massive organization nearly takes a miracle.
I’m willing to listen if there is an alternative to capitalism that doesn’t put decision making into a central authority. Even a direct democracy can make some types of research impossible, as public interest waxes and wanes faster than it takes to complete something complex.