I think we are getting hung up on different usages of the word "efficient."

Government can be efficient at delivering a well-defined service, or meeting a well-defined goal. For example Medicare is a pretty efficient program, and we did make it to the Moon with NASA.

Efficiency can also refer to the allocation of capital toward innovations with the greatest expected payoff or outcome. This is where freely operating private markets outperformed government planning by a large margin during the 20th century.

I thought we were discussing this usage of "efficient" since cturner referred to "picking winners".