The lesson is that private industry rewards success and punishes failure (not necessarily evenly), I'm not sure of the intent of your parenthetical phrase, or how much weight to give it, but surely you can't mean this as a general statement. Private industry doesn't reward failure, but punishes it? What planet are you living on? Have you never heard of Carly Fiorina?
I have worked for any number of companies where incompetence is rewarded, primarily because of who the incompetent person is. The only people that seem to suffer are the ones who are productive and do the work. They usually get the boot if a project fails, even if it isn't their fault.
As I said private industry does not always punish failure evenly, but it does punish failure. Of course the closer a company is to being a government contractor (like HP) the closer it gets to acting like government in tolerating failure.
But even HP have suffered due to Fiorina's mismanagement. Last I checked she is no longer in charge of HP. It is the fault of HP's major investors if she was allowed to skate away with a golden parachute. I'm sure she lost quite a bit in stock options, that she would have received had she done the job right.
No one is claiming the marketplace is perfect or fair, but certainly the government gets it wrong almost always - and never generates a greater return on investment (taxes) than private industry which is expected to day in and day out.