Much of what government,at least American government, does is to take over what private initiative has started and make it more uniform, more universal.
For example, roads--many of our roads started as Indian trails, simply because of the influence of geography. Colonies did some roads, private initiative did other roads ("turnpikes" as I was taught), eventually governments took over almost all roads, except for driveways. That was mostly true through the 20th century; now private enterprise is building roads again, toll roads.
Another example is redlining. The simple version is that the New Deal's agency to provide mortgages for housing and distressed homeowners divided cities into two areas: those where no mortgages would be supported and those where mortgages were available. The redlined areas were black, the others were white. That's drastically oversimplified, as McWhorter describes in this Times piece.
The reality is that bankers were always deciding who could get a mortgage and who couldn't. As their volume increased, they simplified their decision making by generalizing to areas. When the Feds got involved, they further generalized the process.
See this piece by Colin Gordon in Dissent.
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