Ok, but if something has gone on for 70+ years its not a 'misstep' that something else.

And doing all these things very well is not easy even in the nations that do it 'best' and most nations are not in that class.

In terms of the Post Office for example, they had to kill their commercial competitor to establish a monopoly and held back more advanced competitors like FedEx with their monopoly. Thus useful services didn't exist for many decades where they could have existed.