Comment by SunshineTheCat
1 day ago
> "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.
As with anything, they are all things that could be done better by a company.
Airlines are a great example of this. They have changed very little in the last 30 years (again, thanks to all the government regulation and red tape).
Smartphones, TVs, (and literally anything else not in the hands of the government) has also seen rapid improvements.
Anything the government handles is always rife with overspending, inefficiency, and corruption.
A company must maintain profitability to stay alive.
The government on the other hand, is $38 TRILLION dollars in the red.
Yes, the things that "people willingly buy" are the literal engine that makes all of this possible. It is not the reverse.
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This discussion about the purpose of government is valid as a way to disagree with the "willingly buy" language, but it's still true that most of those examples don't answer the question and to refuse them is not "weaseling out".
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> My bet is the GP's going to weasel out using his "that people willingly buy" language
Well, they aren't willingly buying it. They are funded with taxes.
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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.
Like, even if that was true, which super blatantly they are not, they are not intended to make a profit, they are intended to accomplish a goal.
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.
No company ever got a man to the Moon.
Sure, some companies participated in the process. But it was a government that did it.
It's been more than 50 years and private companies haven't been able to match it.
The greatest technical achievement of mankind was done by a government. Private industry could, at best, help.
Sorry all the other things you name are great. But the winner is government.
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Whittle (Whipple is a painter) "invented" the jet engine while serving in the RAF, so technically not privately funded at the point of invention. There was private funding used later to create prototype engines.
Quite a stretch to say the Atomic Bomb was privately funded!!!
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You had me until fracking.
The Department of Energy funded much of the early research into fracking in the 70s
https://www.energy.gov/hgeo/articles/does-early-investment-s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracking_in_the_United_States https://clearpath.org/tech-101/hydraulic-fracturing-a-public...
Didn't gov funded science invent MRIs?