Posted on 05/29/2015 4:47:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
How many times have you heard President Obama and his minions pat themselves on the back for their noble "investments" in "roads and bridges"? Without government infrastructure spending, we're incessantly reminded, we wouldn't be able to conduct our daily business.
"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive," Vice President Joe Biden infamously asserted. "Private enterprise," he sneered, lags behind.
As always, the Beltway narcissists have it backward. Without private enterprise and free-market visionaries, public infrastructure wouldn't exist. Take the iconic Brooklyn Bridge, which turned 132 years old this week. It's not a government official whose vision built that. It's a fierce capitalist who revolted against unimaginative command-and-control bureaucrats in his home country.
Before he went on to pioneer aqueducts and suspension bridges across America, culminating in the Brooklyn Bridge, John Roebling was a government engineer in the German province of Westphalia. A cog in the Prussian building machine, he chafed under autocratic rule. No decisions could be made, no actions taken, he complained in his diary, "without first having an army of government councilors, ministers, and other functionaries deliberate about it for ten years, make numerous expensive journeys by post, and write so many long reports about it, that for the amount expended for all this, reckoning compound interest for ten years, the work could have been completed."
Fed up with innovation-stifling conformity, subordination and red tape, the ambitious 25-year-old Roebling set sail for the U.S. in 1831 aboard the American-built ship August Edward. During the 78-day journey, he wrote of his hopes and dreams "to found a new home in the western continent beyond the ocean, a new fatherland free from tyranny." Upon arriving in Philadelphia, he celebrated his adopted land's free-market economy.
"The numerous hindrances, restrictions and obstacles, which are set up by timid governments and countless hosts of functionaries against every endeavor in Germany, are not to be found here," he reflected in a letter to friends and family.
"The foreigner must be astounded at what the public spirit of these republicans has accomplished up to now and what it still accomplishes every day. All undertakings take place through the association of private persons. In these the principal aim is naturally the making of money." The pursuit of self-interest was in of itself a source of public good, he concluded, "principally (as) a result of unrestricted intercourse in a concerted action of an enlightened, self-governing people."
Roebling failed at silkworm-farming, fabric-dying, rape seed oil farming and canary-raising before embarking on his engineering career. He patented an improved boiler for steamships, a safety gauge for a steam-boiler flue and a steam-powered motorcycle. He traveled wherever he could utilize his skills -- constructing dams on the Beaver River, consulting on hydraulics on the Croton River Aqueduct, knocking on doors for work across Pennsylvania.
With unbridled determination to build a lucrative family business, he patented and pioneered America's first commercially successful wire rope company. Frugal and financially savvy, Roebling operated on saved capital and refused to borrow. Several of his new clients paid him in stock, and he soon had a thriving investment portfolio. Coal mining companies in the anthracite region snapped up his sturdy cables.
Did he have "help" along the way? Plenty -- from other capitalists, that is.
Roebling purchased his wire from industrial pioneer Robert Townsend, who had founded the first iron wire mill west of the Allegheny Mountains in 1816. Townsend, who had learned the wire-making trade from Baltimore wire weaver Hugh Balderson, manufactured rivets, nails, fasteners and telegraph wire, in addition to supplying Roebling with wire for his early experiments and projects.
Samuel Wickersham's Pittsburgh Wire Works also supplied wire as Roebling gained more project work. And Sligo Iron Works made charcoal "blooms" for Roebling's wire: large blocks cast from molten iron and later steel, which were then "hot rolled" at high temperatures between two rotating cylinders into wire rods.
Later, Roebling's sons Charles and Ferdinand built a 200-acre state-of-the-art manufacturing campus, steel plant and village outside Trenton, N.J. Employing 8,000 workers, Kinkora Works produced everything from chicken wire and telegraph wire to tramway and elevator cables.
The suspension cables on the Golden Gate and George Washington bridges were manufactured by the Roeblings. So were the control cables in the Spirit of St. Louis, the first airplane to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and the tramway and construction cables used to build the Panama Canal. Even the wires used to stabilize the wings of the Wright Brothers' aircraft used Roebling trusses.
Here's the lesson White House progressives and Common Core historians won't teach: Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge is a towering legacy of the countless pursuits of individual American innovators who benefited the public by benefiting themselves and their families. The wealth-shaming social engineers in Washington will never understand. Private profit is a public good.
100 % agreed.
These days from debt created out of thin air.
Let them sell sponsorships.
“This westbound lane of the Brooklyn Bridge brought to you by Microsoft”.
Seriously, my town needs to replace the running track and football field at the high school. We have one person who will make a donation for about 50% of the cost IF we raise the remainder by the end of the year. We are trying to get local businesses to sponsor the track and field. Therefore, we will probably end up with billboards around the facility.
Why can’t some of these larger public works projects sponsored by large corporations.
At the same time, that sort of thing can be demagogued, too. Consider the $1000 ash try added into the cockpits of some cargo aircraft. The paperwork burden required to do anything in a military aircraft made it impossible to make money doing that job for a measly $1000. It was unavoidable, if the pilots were going to smoke. It turned out that there were sports cars on the market for which you would have to pay $300 to replace an ash try.In that situation, the manufacturer would have been better off to have done the job gratis rather than take the PR hit.
There was also the case of the model airplane which was needed to demonstrate the solution to a problem in that aircraft type. The engineer bought the model out of his own pocket for $10; if he had requisitioned it he would have waited at least half a year - and meeting all the requirements would have caused the cost to be at least $50 in paperwork.
Is someone stopping them?
This will become a much larger issue when some sort of catastrophe occurs.
*rme* The article was not about some musical group, but the architect of the bridge.
Geez—I was being facetious! Didn’t mean to mess up your thread.
I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. It was the source of Milton Friedman's much later reference to the fact that "nobody knows how to make a pencil." The point of the article is that although a pencil seems trivially simple, the Eberhard Faber company didn't make the raw materials for it, nor the equipment required to efficiently manufacture pencils from those materials. And the same applies to all the manufacturers of the enamel and the rest of the ingredients. Not only so, but the people required to do all the work in the suppliers as well as Eberhard Faber itself all had to be supplied with their needs and wants, or else they wouldn't be available to do the work either.The obvious conclusion is that society - not just a single company - makes the pencil. Note well, I said "society." I did not say, "government":
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others. - Thomas Paine,Common Sense (1776)
Sen. Fauxcahontas is not going to be happy about this article.
You see; it wouldn’t be - uh - “polite” to ask the FIRST “BLACK” PRESIDENT questions like that. I’ll admit; it IS a puzzle where all that money went. (Down the old rabbit hole, I suppose.) - I keep seeing quotes from people who intend to “impeach” him for his boo-boos; and most of them are raising funds for legal fees to pursue bringing him to justice. - I guess I’ve gotten cynical over the years.
Excellent pairing.
Great call back! Thanks
Who built the Brooklyn Bridge?
Blacks and Mexicans.
They built the whole country, donchaknow.
It is. I built it. I own it. But I’m willing to sell it for peanuts really! You’d be a fool not to buy it at such a ridiculously low price!
Excellent pairing.society - not just a single company - makes the pencil. Note well, I said "society." I did not say, "government":SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. - Thomas Paine, Common Sense
The last of my uncles to pass on was a lifelong flaming lib. I noted in him the tendency to "confound society with government," and finally I challenged him to define the difference between the two. He confessed that he did not distinguish between the two. It became my settled opinion that socialists compulsively use "society" as a euphemism for "government," and if I had the ear of a Republican Speaker of the House, I would recommend that House rules should allow a point of order to be made whenever anyone abused the English language in that specific way.It is Newspeak.
Of course, "public" is abused in exactly the same way, and that should be out of bounds as well. As Milton Friedman pointed out, a "public" school is nothing other than a government school.
The Brooklyn Bridge as an example of free market enterprise? Ha! Sure, the work originally started under the New York Bridge Company (a private company), but the project went way over budget and was taken over by the cities of New York and Brooklyn, who paid the majority of the $15 million (over $2.5 billion in today dollars) construction costs.
Nearly all of the NYC subway system was built by the city, and then leased to private companies to operate.
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