Posted on 08/05/2012 6:53:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Without big government, President Obama likes to suggest, we would all be poor, miserable creatures. For starters, he claims that business became possible only because government built roads and bridges.
Actually, Obama has it backwards. Private business came first, then roads and bridges.
They weren’t originally developed by governments. They were developed by merchants who began establishing trade routes thousands of years ago. In the beginning, before the first Department of Public Works, there were innumerable trails.
Developing trails required that somebody travel, and kings generally didn’t travel unless they were conquering new territory. If they left their territory for an extended period, they would probably have returned to find somebody else ruling the territory that used to be theirs. So it was merchants, hoping to make money, who blazed the trails for regional and long distance trade. At their own expense, merchants determined the most worthwhile places to go and the most efficient ways of getting there.
Europe’s first great civilizations arose from private trade. Starting perhaps around 7000 B.C.E., a resourceful maritime people who became known as Minoans established themselves in Crete. They were ancient history to Homer. They brought copper from Cyprus, tin from Asia Minor, elephant Tusks from Syria and diorite from the Nile Valley – and Minoan pottery made its way to Egypt.
The ancient origin of private markets and trade routes is most dramatically evident in prehistoric trade goods such as obsidian, a brittle volcanic glass that can be chipped into knife blades, mirrors and other implements. Valued for perhaps 30,000 years, obsidian tools have turned up at most early village sites in the Middle East and Mediterranean. Usually such villages were hundreds of miles away from the sources.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Government itself has never built anything. Private individuals came up with the idea, private individuals discovered the ideas could be made real, and private individuals built the idea. Heck, the government can’t even claim to fund the projects, considering it has no money except that which it confiscates from the people.
These facts are why the government’s sole role in society is a protector of our rights and nothing more.
It would be most accurate to say that roads and bridges came as a means of facilitating business that was hindered by the lack of roads and bridges. And when it comes right down to it, business is still the primary revenue source of road building and maintenance.
The fact is that there is plenty of money for roads and bridges if we’d stop spending the money on public transportation, bike trails, and other things completely unrelated to highways. As I understand it, some 30% is skimmed off the top of the highway fund before any money is spent.
Only the government would build a road to nowhere.
Tragedy Averted:
Mooch Attends Campaign Fundraiser At Mass Dem Governor’s House Without Having To Drive Over A Pothole…
RICHMOND — It was mission accomplished yesterday for the governor and local administrators as first lady Michelle Obama enjoyed a velvet-smooth ride to a luxe fundraiser at Gov. Deval Patrick’s 77-acre palatial estate in this sleepy, leafy Berkshires burg, a Herald Truth Squad review found....
Which came first, the paved roads or the automobiles created by private enterprise;
Which came first, the airports or the airplanes that were designed and built by innovating private citizens;
and which came first, the Internet or the hundreds of technological advances (i.e. computers, software, hardware, languages/protocols, routers, servers, etc) created by private enterprises?
Private industry generated the need for infrastructure improvements, not the other way around you brain-dead libtard ignoramus.
Government neither builds or earns anything. It only takes from those that work their asses off. Once it has taken that money it hands it out to those that have “connections” with their party.
Those that work and pay get nothing. Those that sit on their asses get everything.
I am clearly convinced the only way out is another civil war. I just hope it takes place in my lifetime. I’m fed up with this class warfare bullsh!t coming from the left.
I am always ‘amazed’ that when you see a Highway Project sign - well today ‘they’ like to say it is stimulus money with ‘you know who’s’ picture/and-or name attached.
The signage reads “I4444444 94% funded by Fed Govt, 6% funded by state and local”.
The correct reading should be “I4444444 6% funding state and local citizens, 94% funded by ‘confiscated’ funds from the good citizens of the other 49 (or is that 57) states”
I suppose the Mob qualifies as private enterprise.
Folks, want the real skinny on building roads and bridges. Here it is. Now....we know that the 50% of Americans that do not pay taxes, federal, state & local never contributed to the building of roads, bridges, infastructure, etc. So...who did pay for these necessities, why the 50% of working Americans, not the deadbeats living off the “free” “Obama Stash” including many self-made small business men & women. End of story!!! OBAMA lies, all the time!!!
Folks, want the real skinny on building roads and bridges. Here it is. Now....we know that the 50% of Americans that do not pay taxes, federal, state & local never contributed to the building of roads, bridges, infastructure, etc. So...who did pay for these necessities, why the 50% of working Americans, not the deadbeats living off the “free” “Obama Stash”, including many self-made small business men & women. End of story!!! OBAMA lies, all the time!!!
Excellent article, SAF. Thanks for posting. It is WELL worth reading the entire article and the comments as well where the original author handily rebuts some liberal counter-arguments.
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