With taxes funding the work, there will be some (aggregate) metric to decide who gets the grants, and some committee to decide said metric and apply it. Which inevitably leads to corruption, both in directly gaming the metric and in greasing the committee wheels to choose the metric that favors certain kind of projects, certain kind of credentials, and/or certain socio-ethno-economic identity markers of the authors.
While the capitalist system is nakedly brutal, at least offers a skilled, determined and lucky person the opportunity to spend a part of their career earning (temporary) financial independence, and then spend it to finance their own projects.
For example, what if you were guaranteed housing, food, and water for working some government job (assigned at random even) a couple of days a week? Most likely people will not want to be janitors and the like so it makes sense to tie social needs to the benefits to offset this, and the food provided does not need to have a lot of choice, as long as it meets nutrition requirements.
Ambitious humans may want more, fine, allow an industry as we do now for people to grow and expand. In fact, competing with the government guaranteeing basic needs puts an easy floor on otherwise exploitative jobs. You have to at least beat the floor to attract any labor.
With taxes funding the work, there will be some (aggregate) metric to decide who gets the grants, and some committee to decide said metric and apply it. Which inevitably leads to corruption, both in directly gaming the metric and in greasing the committee wheels to choose the metric that favors certain kind of projects, certain kind of credentials, and/or certain socio-ethno-economic identity markers of the authors.
While the capitalist system is nakedly brutal, at least offers a skilled, determined and lucky person the opportunity to spend a part of their career earning (temporary) financial independence, and then spend it to finance their own projects.