Comment by wredcoll
1 day ago
> The reality is, most government "solutions" cause more problems than they solve
The "reality" is that propaganda heavily encourages you to ignore the government successes and only focus on the failures. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine who benefits from that.
> "government successes"
Please, name for me one product or service that the US government has created, that people willingly buy, that has made your life tangibly better.
I can list a billion made by businesses.
Please, go for it. Just one.
USPS
Medicaid
The National Park System
I know that the next step is you explaining why these don’t count, or saying “wow only 3” or whatever, but
> I know that the next step is you explaining why these don’t count, or saying “wow only 3” or whatever, but
Oh, there's more: Medicare, Social Security, the highway system.
The whole food/medicine regulatory system is also a big one, and it's the reason a lot of US (and European) products like baby formula are imported into China, because they can be more trusted.
My bet is the GP's going to weasel out using his "that people willingly buy" language. The flawed assumption there is the government should be conceptualized as just another company selling in the market, when the government's actual role is very different.
19 replies →
USPS - is self-funded, though it is operating at a loss. It also is a legal monopoly, meaning competitors for first class mail are illegal.
Medicaid - funded by the government, meaning people are not willingly paying for it
The National Park System - funded by the government, meaning people are not willingly paying for it
Every single thing you just mentioned is insolvent.
1 reply →
The proto-Internet. GPS. Nuclear energy. MRIs. Fracking. The Human Genome Project. Fiber optics. Optical data storage. Jet engines. Heck, the entire space industry. Lithium ion batteries. Radar. Night vision technology. Modern lower limb prosthetics. Just off the top of my head
Jet engines - Frank Whipple (England) and Franz Ohain (Germany) invented them. In both cases the governments were not interested in them until flying jet aircraft were demonstrated. Lockheed was ordered by the government to abandon their jet engine project and focus on piston engines instead (which resulted in the US having to get started on jet aircraft by buying British machines).
Human genome - J. Venter was the first to sequence the human genome, privately funded.
the entire space industry - Liquid fuel rockets were pioneered by Goddard, through private funding.
Radar - originated from late 19th-century experiments on radio wave reflection, pioneered by Heinrich Hertz in 1886. While Christian Hülsmeyer patented a "telemobiloscope" for ship detection in 1904
The proto-Internet - Pioneered by Samuel Morse, see "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage. Privately funded.
Optical data storage - Invented by D Gregg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Paul_Gregg, at a private company.
Nuclear energy - a very long list of contributors. See "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".
And so on.
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You had me until fracking.
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Didn't gov funded science invent MRIs?