Offered up as proof that we need government in this era of justifying extracting more and more money from the private sector to further grow our 3.6 trillion dollar a year (running trillion plus deficits, adding to a $15 trillion debt and 120 trillion in unfunded liabilities) is that hey, no government, no internet.
How do you like us now? [thrusts hat out for additional taxes]
Well what's wrong with this argument? I recently linked an article that points out that the internet itself was not "invented" by the government, but actually by Xerox. Now, the embryo of the protocol that the internet actually uses was developed by a government worker to serve a particular government purpose. But that purpose wasn't to "create" an information superhighway where we could all log on and tweet pictures of our wieners between Amazon orders.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, just for those who don't seem to be listening. We need government like we need lots of other things. We need it specifically for law and order - to protect our natural rights from violations by others including from their use of the government to violate our natural rights. And government isn't this ethereal thing that does nothing. It has internal processes just like any other business.
So the government, like the power industry and like any other sector of society, does things, and it tries to improve the way its internal workings operate to enhance things, make things better, and more efficient for itself. Things it comes up with are no different than things someone comes up with at Boeing. Someone will ultimately see that thing, and say "hey, what if I use THAT with THIS OTHER THING to do THIS?".
The point here being that it's not like if person A didn't come up with it, no other person B would ever have come up with it. It's ludicrous to think otherwise. Things get invented in response to need.
Would we have an internet had it not been for the government? I say, yes. Someone else in some other industry would have had a need similar to the need the government had for such a protocol, and it would have been designed, and others would have built on it.
Roads, I say, are a different story. Roads involve personal property rights of (depending on the road) tens, hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people. When the concept of "eminent domain" is brought up, roads are the first thing that come to mind. Not condemning personal property and giving it to someone else who will develop it and increase its value as a tax base.
Roads also provide an agreed upon literally [in general] public route that does not mean cutting across others' property. They are exactly the kind of thing we need government for, mainly for the myriad legal implications of laying one down in the first place. Even if somebody at Boeing came up with the concept of a system of interconnected roads, it would have no authority to build them. The internet -- different story, outside of (same argument) the existing utility rights-of-way ... the legalese.
Long and short of it is, just because something was done by the government doesn't mean it couldn't or wouldn't have been done by someone in the private sector. "The Government Invented The Internet" is not just wrong, it's a straw man anyway.
5 comments:
“So the government, like the power industry and like any other sector of society, does things, and it tries to improve the way its internal workings operate to enhance things, make things better, and more efficient for itself. Things it comes up with are no different than things someone comes up with at Boeing.”
Philmon, you seems to be inadvertently making the point Obama argues, that government and private business goals are one in the same. Which is complete bullshit.
Government fails at all the things you mention, they’re terrible inefficient at making things better, their “internal workings” are horrendous at “enhancing” whatever they happened to be involved in, not to mention the built in lack of accountability at controlling costs. Which is the very main argument that this whole thing is about, spending/raising taxes.
Surly you don’t think that comparatively Social Security is better than a private retirement account, that a private company couldn’t run the DMV, or schools or a whole host of other examples, better than the government? Do you really think the gov. could make just as good as an airplane as Boeing?
“Would we have an internet had it not been for the government? I say, yes.”
But based on what? Speculation? I’m not gonn’a bother to read that article on Xerox, based on the fact that Xerox is but a mere 20 miles from where I wrote this and I’ve NEVER heard they were responsible for the invention of the internet, and I’m certain I would have in 48 years.
As you point out, the government is responsible for certain things, we can agree with that. However, I am willing to admit that someone else in some other industry would not have produced our ability for space exploration, for example. I think some things are beyond the private sectors ability or inclination due to many factors such as costs and return on investment, etc. Besides, there is no threat of infringing on personal liberty in flying to the moon, so to use that argument, as Barry did, as an example that “we are in this together” BS is waste of time trying to use in a debate about private versus socialism (that what he basically is describing).
But that’s not to agree with Barry. Because if I drove down the road, (and I’m not conceding that is what he was talking about, hardly) roads built with my taxes, my businesses taxes, and everyone else’s taxes, to work everyday, no one else gets to take credit for what I accomplish. That’s infantile, non serious, socialistic thinking. Anymore than if I failed would it be on anyone else but me.
His whole speech is so full of holes it’s not worth debating, the man has a childish view of free enterprise it’d be laughable if he wasn‘t our president.
"Philmon, you seems to be inadvertently making the point Obama argues, that government and private business goals are one in the same."
Not at all the point I am making. Whether or not the government actually succeeds, in general, at doing many things well (especially those it was not intended by original intent to do) is a wholly separate argument.
I am acknowledging, though, that people work in the government, and they are tasked with things, and sometimes they're smart people and come up with useful things.
It does NOT follow, however, that because a guy at the government developed the idea that we would not have it if it hadn't been for government.
Someone else would have come up with the idea.
Going back and reading the article again, it looks like it actually says that TCP/IP was NOT, in fact, invented by a government employee. However, the Pentagon was involved in ARPANET - which was not an internet, as it connected one or more computers, but not one or more networks ... which is what the internet is.
Ethernet was developed at Xerox.
Ethernet is what does link multiple networks.
Xerox decided to go ahead and connect different networks, because, *surprise*, the private sector has more motivation to get things done. Whether or not you ever heard of Xerox's role in the development of the internet has no bearing on whether or not it's true.
The argument here isn't that we all owe Xerox more of out tax money, either.
"Surly you don’t think that comparatively Social Security is better than a private retirement account, that a private company couldn’t run the DMV, or schools or a whole host of other examples, better than the government? Do you really think the gov. could make just as good as an airplane as Boeing?"
Absolutely not. Again, just because someone at the government came up with an idea doesn't make it any more special because that's where he worked when he came up with it. On the contrary, I'm in your camp when it comes to how efficient government is at things, and for the same reasons. But to say that nobody in the government can have a good idea is just as dumb as saying nobody in the private sector can have a bad one. As a matter of fact, what makes the private sector better at doing the things it is supposed to do is in government, there's no incentive for bad ideas to die. In the private sector, there certainly is!
"But based on what? Speculation?"
Sure. You could call it that. Xerox isn't the only company that had a need to interconnect networks, and if they hadn't done it first, someone else would have figured it out. Necessity is the mother of invention.
“Someone else would have come up with the idea.”
I guess that all depends on what exactly we’re talking about. Gov. workers have an advantage in many ways when it comes to certain areas. They are not hindered by time, costs, etc. so, I disagree that somebody in the private sector can or would come up with such things I’ve already mentioned.
As a general statement, I suppose I agree with you though.
Setting aside all the details of who invented what minutia with regards to the actual “internet” as we know it, do really believe Xerox or somebody else, had the same resources as the DOD to come up with the entire, complete idea and then, more importantly actually implement it ? An idea is one thing, hell I’ve come up with a few, but having the virtually unlimited resources to do it is something completely different.
Lastly, I just find it more than a little curious that living in a rather small city, with friends, family, friends of family, etc, working there, with some rather impressive companies such as Xerox, Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Paychex, one of the leading medical schools in the country, U of R, combined with some local news channels, newspapers, etc. that report ad nauseam everything they do, down to the ridiculous, that I’ve never once heard anyone say anything close to what that article supposedly states. Seems rather peculiar and leads me to believe it’s because there’s more to the story than simply - Xerox is responsible for the internet.
It’d be like living in St. Louis and not know Budweiser makes beer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet
I think we're getting too bogged down in details here. If you say Xerox didn't invent the internet, certainly the Government didn't, either. That's the point. And nobody came up with the whole idea before any of the elements were in place to create the internet and then made it happen. Ideas grew for use in some things, and then others found other uses for those same things to create things with yet bigger scopes. The government was involved (and really not so much the DOD, but research institutions such as Universities and NCAR), but so was IBM and MCI (and they did use Xerox's protocol).
It's not like the Government stepped out one day and said, "And lo, I give thee the Internet".
I will also not deny that some good things have come out of bad government policy. It doesn't make the policy good.
"I think we're getting too bogged down in details"
Agreed.
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