The broken windows fallacy isn’t about government spending. The parable never mentions governments or taxes, you have added that piece. Voluntary economic transactions don’t have a positive ROI by virtue of being voluntary. People and companies engage in negative ROI activities all the time.
People and private companies that are reliant on voluntary transactions for their funding will go bankrupt and be forced to stop if they spend too much on negative ROI activities. Governments can just raise taxes/borrow more money and keep spending until the whole country implodes, unless voters stop them.
> it has nothing to do with being private or public
It has everything to do with being public or private. Private companies exist to generate a positive ROI; that's literally their whole purpose. Companies with high ROIs attract massive investment and expand, companies with low or negative ROIs cease to exist. It's a self-optimizing system.
Government programs have no concern for ROI and that's precisely the problem; they just siphon more resources out of the private sector and keep going regardless of whether there's any return or not.
== Government programs have no concern for ROI and that's precisely the problem; they just siphon more resources out of the private sector and keep going regardless of whether there's any return or not.==
You have inserted your personal bias and declared it a fact. Many government programs have ended. Many programs have very specific concern for ROI. Government has an ROI timeline lasting generation-to-generation (see: moon landing, interstate, quantum investments), a company has a timeline lasting quarter-to-quarter (see: SEC filings).
Different entities can also measure ROI differently. To you ROI means positive net income and growth. It could mean patent or litigation protection for a large company.
