I thought I would give Tom a break as he will get carpal tunnel syndrome soon - and his insurance company probably won't do anything for that without a real healthy deductible first. And anyone who has had carpal knows anyway the doctors just mess your wrists up further.

So here goes,

The reason you are so overworked should be readilly apparent. It is precisely your little throw aways that make discourse with you exhausting and frustrating. Keeping to the point just isn't easy. I am learing a lot from you, for example:

No, Tom is just overworked cause he takes it upon himself to try and educate everyone who posts here...he hasn't learned yet to pick and choose posts. He doesn't 'discriminate' enough (hard to believe, for us right-wingers eh?)

"The leftist creed ....".

I didn't realize those included in the class of leftist, which I interpret to mean the population that doesn't agree with Ayn Rand, have a creed. I was under the impression that only right wing conservatives are privy to the revealed word. The religious conformity of "dittoism" seems the more creedy to me.

Oh yeah...they got a creed. Not just a creed but a full blown agenda. The agenda is POWER the creed is RUTHLESSNESS and the preferred method is upon the backs of the uneducated and poor - folks who are statistically too dumb to see what's going on. Folks who are easily manipulated.

Huh?

The only legitimate government function you have mentioned in this pork festival is "public safety."


Here we go babe. Listen carefully. The development of Infrastructure has been a major part of the development of industrial nations and especially the modern post-industrial nation. To spread and accelereate economic developments transportation, communications, electrification has to be built ahead of the market. Capitalistic infrastructure can only be built behind, or slightly ahead of the market. Historically, private money built America's railroads east of the Mississippi where the markets already existed; public money was required to build them west of the Mississippi where markets were to be built.



Publicly financed high-speed passenger rail systems are presently in every major industrial couontry except the US and Canada. The line between Osaka and Tokyo is highly profitable. No such trains have been built, or will be built entirely with private money in the US.
The economic risks are too great, the length of time until payoffs too long, and without the right of eminent domain, the land cannot be acquired for right-of-way. Face the realities of this time--not a century ago, where your economics are rooted. The Chunnel fiasco on the English side is a great example of this.



The problem is much deeper than that. The problem is competing lobbying interests from the carmakers who are dead opposed to high-speed transit.

The problem is PROVINCIAL mentalities who live within 4 miles of their home and see no value in high-speed public transportation.

"Oh that's for RICH folks who travel!"

Yes, while many would love to travel - travel comes with risks.

In San Diego, they have a tram - it is not used by anyone but teens, poor folks and drug dealers. It was built to arrive at the fashion valley mall and increase business.

Business dropped off - dramatically.

The undesirables now loiter. The first murder ever in the mall occured within a year. Middle class shoppers avoid the place now like the plague. It is now almost solely supported only by rich mexicans who come across the border to spend their wads of hundred dollar bills.

Yes, high speed transit might bring the illiterate folks from Florida to other states - all too easily. So folks who like progress thinks twice. ;-)


For a short list, the REA was necessary to bring electricity to rural america. TVA formed the engine that grew the south. Eli Whitney's invention of interchangeable parts was government financed by the War Department in 1801. The National Road in 1815. The Boston Post Road. The Erie Canal. Free land under the Homestead Act was required to attract the "private" investment you so praise. Land grant colleges formed the basis for our national university system. Interstate highways, use of the postal system to provide subsidy to early airlines, public air ports, atomic energy, space exploration, the world's electronic highway-a 1969 DOD effort, etc. ad infinitum.

Yes, federal monies are often necessary, but as mentioned earlier - these were all considered a BOON to business and had no organized interest (one of the largest companies in the world) set against them.

"The hard facts are that if you look at almost ANY commodity that is cheap, and generally available to everyone regardless of wealth, it will be something that is provided by the private sector."


Simply not true. Biotechnology, as example, has the possiblity to change the world and the nature of man-kind itself. Fifty years of massive government investments were required before the first results started to appear. Private industrial laboratories focus on projects that are expected to pay off in seven years or less. The only private labs that took a long term perspective were Bell Labs and the IBM labs that were quasi-monopolies. The minutre AT&T(under government force) and IBM (under market force) were deregulated they cut long-term research out of their budgets.


Well, the private sector is much better at managing and inventing the new ideas and revolutionary concepts and in the long haul always much cheaper than the collected tax burden government imposes for even the most trifling services.

Federal highway money was lobbied by GM and the big three automakers. It was sold as a NUKE expressway - literally as a way to flee the cities should the bombs be enroute.

The government and the people need to be convinced of the immediate value of a large financial investment. Otherwise they don't gve a rats a-- about a project.

It helps too if they are being lobbied, cajoled and perked - by big industries with political clout.

"The free market always works. This is not a fantasy, this is observable facts. Where governments use force to prevent it from working, you begin to have problems."


This standing the truth on its head. The free market has NEVER worked and our brief experience in approaching it in the 1890's was a disaster. Even Republican pres. Teddy Roosevelt saw the need to step in and break the trusts. We do not have a free market now, didn't have on yesterday, and won't have one tomorrow. We have a mixed economy and we have to work to keep this balance. When we approach a theoretical state of corporatism, then we risk getting out of this balance. Enron's Lay donating $100,000. to Dubya's inauguration jumps this balance.

Enron donated to everyone and everybody, aggressively wooing politicians for the very reason that they knew they had become a trumped up company built upon a house of cards.

Business and government go along so long as the government does its job - namely providing laws and a safe environment to conduct business. As soon as government gets too involved in companies business in the US - it generally falters. This is not true in Germany or Japan. However they are unrepentant capitalists and know where their bread is buttered. The US congress is filled with many - who like Tom points out so often - actually hold Marxist views and wish to dismantle big business as an evil enemy of the 'people'.

This makes the US government a 'schizoid' business partner - and one infested with people who you do not want messing with your business...not on a bet!

"Oh, come on. Again, my resentment about having a gun barrel jammed into my chest and my wallet emptied is repainted as "stinginess." Does anyone even buy this gag anymore? "



(Tom, obviously some people still do.)


Ah so, grasshopper! " We are like a big fish that has been pulled from the water and is flopping wildly to find its way back in. In such a condition the fish never asks where the next flip or flop will bring it. It senses only that its present position is intolerable and that something else must be tried." Daedalus (spring '93)

The government in this role takes on the role of the fiddling lazy grasshopper - it PRODUCES nothing - while business takes on the role of the toiling ants. The winter is coming and the grasshopper mooches off of the ants.

"But I will give some of what I take from you to other grasshoppers whop are also starving and unprepared for the winter."

Great. That's a big comfort.

SDAI-Tech1