Quote:
Originally Posted by erps
all through history we've managed to transition without government interference, from fire wood to coal, from horses to automobiles, from steam engines to internal combustion engines, from telegraphs to cellular phones. Kind of makes you wonder how me managed.
|
That's because we didn't. What makes you think that those transitions were done without government help?
To add to your list:
Air Travel
Railroads
were transitions that were speed up and spearheaded by the government.
A few details if you care to learn:
1. The entire highway system in the USA, including such legends as the Lincoln Highway, Interstate System and virtually ALL major state highways, were created by the governments.....completely subsidized as a way to promote good car and bike travel.
2. The largest accomplishment in the first 100 years of our history, the transcontinental railroad, coordinated and paid for by the government. No other entity was large enough to do so.
3. The post office and the military both helped tremendously in the development and use of airplanes.
4. The Telegraph- "Congress (reflecting public apathy) funded $30,000 to construct an experimental telegraph
line from Washington to Baltimore, a distance of 40 miles (the FIRST telegraph). Six years later, members of Congress witnessed the sending and receiving of messages over part of the telegraph
line.
I guess it's easier to say that all these things just happened by themselves...with the only problem being that IT IS NOT TRUE.
There are certain things that the private sector cannot or will not do without some help. As a for instance, the private sector cannot assign a railroad path 3,000 miles through the country! The private sector cannot and does not build vast road networks and bridges and tunnels. Without these, the automobile would be toast.
As a example of the opposite - of leaving things to private industry WITHOUT government policy - Most American cities and even some entire states (RI, for instance) had vast and efficient electric trolley lines. Most all of them were ripped up......because of General Motors, who:
"GM got together with Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Firestone, and other auto-related firms to set up a holding company that bought up trolley lines, dismantled them, and replaced them with buses. “The noisy, foul-smelling buses turned earlier patrons of the high-speed rail system away from public transit and, in effect, sold millions of private automobiles. Largely as a result, Los Angeles today is an ecological wasteland.”
It takes a lot to actually think these issues through. Believe it or not, the best results occur when government works together with industry to do the right thing. Business is only interested in profit....not in cleaner air, better public transit or using less oil. Government has more interest in that, because it realizes those bigger picture issues. For instance, the USA is 5% of the worlds population yet uses over 25% of the energy in the world...much of it IMPORTED from other places.
That is clearly not right nor sustainable. But business doesn't care.
