By 'the internet', do you mean the descendant of the government funded Arpanet? ;)

Just because the government initially funded one piece of what eventually became the internet, doesn't mean that government sponsorship was necessary. Many other parts of the internet ( telnet, SMTP) were originally developed outside of the government, as were technologies before the age of the mega-state ( such as the telegraph).

does the government get credit for Walmart, for laying down highways? Same concept...the internet is more than just "a series of tubes".

One of the benefits of the government-subsidized interstate highway system is that products can be moved cheaply by truck from ports of entry and factories to wholesalers and from there to retailers, no matter where in the country those wholesalers and retailers are located. Another benefit is that it's economically feasible for a family to live in the suburbs, work in the city, and shop in a more distant suburb.

I wouldn't give the government "credit for Walmart", but the government has created an infrastructure that Walmart used to its benefit.

Except for the government subsidies that sponsored the development of the Internet back when it was called the ARPAnet, of course.

And where do those subsidies come from in the first place?

Yes, it's possible to accomplish many great things without government intervention. Except for creating the Internet in the first place.

Do you believe that no one would have seen the potential for networking computers without government funding?

Just because government funding was central to developing large section of the internet does not mean some similar system would not have developed anyway.

People saw the profit that could be gained by controlling their own networks of computers. Thus, before the Internet was open to the general public, there were online services like The Source, Compuserve, GEnie, AOL, which (as far as I can recall) did not interconnect.

The Internet is a network of networks, where I can rent a server on a data center owned by A which delivers bits through a pipe owned by B to a customer whose ISP is owned by C, and if I don't like A's terms of service then I can go buy equivalent bandwidth and access from A-prime. That wasn't possible with pre-Internet online providers.

AOL et all probably would have interconnected before long though. Look at the text messaging/SMS interconnect as an example.

Lots of people saw the potential. But considering the players involved at the time and their general lack of vision, it would have taken many more years to establish open interconnection standards if it was purely a private effort. The end result would have probably been similar, but the whole effort would have been much slower and less efficient.