Which non US government are you talking about. China is investing heavily and making at least some progress. EU couldn't get "legacy rocketry programs" working, so the reason is incompetence not stubbornness. India is trying a bit, but they don't have capacity to spend. Russia is also trying.

I would call Blue Origin setting off the largest launchpad detonation in history a lot of things, but I would not call it unserious.

At this point, services delivering payloads to space are scarcer than payloads themsleves. Launch service contracts from them are already essentially unavailable. Running ahead while Blue Origin and Rocket Lab still catch up is a significant strategic advantage.

Hot payloads for the next few years are network connectivity and compute, two verticals SpaceX has chosen to compete in, which are major sources of revenue. Aside from saving room for strategic relationships with the US government, they can easily utilize all available capacity themselves.

If (1) SpaceX is the only organization actually able to launch at scale (vs. promising eventual launching at scale while burning through $billions), (2) the Big Money in space will be made with large constellations of internet/cellular communications satellites and orbital DC's, and (3) SpaceX is winding down the launch services that it provides to outside customers - then all of SpaceX's competition for the $$$ will be stuck on the ground, giving them a monopoly.

Eventually, anti-trust law and/or another competent launch provider might break that monopoly. But Elon's buddy Don will control the Justice Dept. for a couple more years. And even for the competent, ramping up launch is slow.

The main negative coverage I've heard is actually that starship is clearly optimized for the commercial LEO market while it has received to date $3B (of $5B) of government funds intended for space exploration as part of a contract it may never deliver on (at least, as it was originally envisaged), delaying Artemis by years and costing the government at least a further $5B in funding of gateway projects which will also be delayed and require expensive re-engineering if/when they are ever deployed.

This could be seen as either straightforward corruption or a gamble on the Starship platform for future Mars exploration.

There are very sound economic reasons why rockets for Moon exploration like Saturn-V were built the way they were. Saturn-V was around $35-40B in today's money for 13 rockets and 6 landings (excluding lander, crew costs). It took 5.5 years from greenlight to first successful orbital flight (which was also its first flight). Starship will likely meet this target of 6 landings after about 20 years of development, $25B R&D (excluding crew/lander contracts), and possibly about $5B in launch costs. Asymptotic costs will of course be much lower, but launch costs do not dominate space exploration costs. The platform might be capable of Mars missions one day - but it's not clear how far out that goal is.