To compare Cardano with government money is a massive oversimplification. First of all, Cardano is deflationary like BTC, not inflationary, so you can't just print an infinite amount of it.

There's over 2000 independent validators on Cardano. You can also see how ADA is staked and is distributed amongst those many validators. In other words, there is no single actor or group of actors that have enough ADA to decide unanimously the future of the protocol. You could try to purchase a lot of ADA until you control 51% of the stake or more... but good luck, hope your wallet is large enough (it isn't).

Cardano has smart contracts, using the eUTXO model, a very interesting paradigm in and of itself. Cardano has a treasury system where every tx fee goes to that treasury, which is then used to fund projects which build on Cardano (ADA holders get to vote on which project gets selected). In essence, it is a self funding mechanism. Cardano also has native assets, either fungible or non-fungible tokens. Anyone with ADA can create and trade those.

We have Dexes, lending platforms, synthetic assets, privacy protocols, layer twos, sidechains, video games, identity solutions and many more are building on Cardano. It's not a perfect ecosystem, but it is alive and growing.

There's just too much for me to cover in one post, but i highly recommend you take deep dive into the subject. Having been in that ecosystem since 2020, I have seen firsthand how much it has grown since, and how it is not stopping.

Check out taptools.io - a coinmarketcap but for Cardano projects/protocols

cexplorer.io - a Cardano explorer. Also contains analytical data and educational content.

I personally like YouTube channels like @learncardano, @kaizencrypto, @bigpey, @AndrewWestberg @ArmyofSpies, and of course, @CharlesHoskinson and @IohkIo

Let's all learn from each other and co-exist peacefully. This is not a zero-sum game.