#1112 Dot Gov

I did a commentary not long ago about the good things government occasionally manages to do. Big investments that private industry sees as too risky or with not enough profit potential.
Much safer, I guess, to invest in credit default swaps.
Anyhow, the government steps in and gets it done. Capitalists are only too happy to see this take place if they can get a portion of the spoils. Workers too. The Intercontinental Railroad and the US Highway system worked like that—lots of dollars in worker’s pockets and even more in speculator’s pockets. All funded by taxpayers, who happened to be many of the same people that got the bucks.
Classic redistribution of wealth through government-sponsored capitalism.
Well I just read about another example of business the government did because business turned their noses up at it. The Internet. That’s right, the guy who invented the Internet actually took his plan to a couple of big corporations first.
His name was Robert Taylor and he was a Defense department employee. His idea was to establish a linked network so computers could talk to each other about research projects and stuff. He took his idea to AT&T, who controlled the telephone network. They rejected it as too risky with no profit potential. He also approached IBM, who, since it involved using all computers, some of which it hadn’t made, turned him down.
Internet schminternet, put all my money in the IBM Selectric.
He was finally able to get the government to see the light and the Internet was born. From the Intercontinental Railroad to the Interstate Highways to the Information Super-highway, each major technological leap that has leveraged our economy to the top of the heap has happened thanks to government.
But I worry. A lot of that infrastructure is crumbling. The political will to build highways never seems to last long enough to maintain them. Potholes and chuckholes abound.
That must be what’s happening when your computer burps and freezes when you’re on the Internet.
You just hit a cyber-chuckhole.
America, ya gotta love it.