Quote:
Originally Posted by p-did
Not in every case. The government programs like Obama's played a major role in building the original infrastructure that made the Internet possible.
You're right, in that most cases, we don't need the government's help to conduct business. But when it comes to major transcontinental infrastructure, the taxpayer funding plays a crucial role in making it possible.
I pay a lot of taxes, but I recognize that roads, water systems, electrical grids, and other vital systems tend to fail if they are split up between competing companies.
In other words, we don't have enough space so that private firms can each build their own competing road system, underground water pipes, and electrical grid.
The same goes for major communication projects. While private funds can achieve great things, the government must also be communited to keeping infrastructure upgraded if we are to compete with other nations, whose infrastructure is well funded by their governments.
Obama recognizes these truths; and that's another reason he should have your vote. |
J.C.R. Licklider, the person one is most able to call the "inventer of the internet", conceived his own ideas, and then got government funding to pursue research on them, the most natural course for him since he already worked for the government. To use this to say an imbecile like Obama can create marvelous new technologies by fiat is a real howler.
You are also regurgitating the standard statist "infrastructure" view, something that I some day hope to debate an exceptionally smart liberal here, so that I won't waste my time listening to stupid arguments, or offer arguments that cannot be grasped by my opposite, but that would exclude you.