You socialists are always wanting governments to do it all.
Gosh.. no need to be insulting.. ;0)
I'm hardly a socialist. I had an interesting professor in college who turned me onto the concept of market failure and gave me an initiation into such concepts of private and public market failure.
Both exist. There are things that the private market can do more efficiently, and things that a government can do better.
Take the highway system, for example. A fully privatized highway system, at the time it was built, would have required toll booths at the entrance and exit of every highway built by a different private entity, greatly impacting traffic flow. Thus, it makes sense that the government marshall it's resources towards creating such an infrastructure.
The space sector, and the necessary R&D required to bring it to fruition is something that only government could do efficiently, since profit from such an enterprise would be of too far a time horizon to attract private capital. And now we're seeing, with the "pump priming" of governmental R&D monies, that we're approaching the point where many Space related tasks can be accomplished by the commerical sector.
But private interests won't get us to Mars, nor establish a base on the moon, for that matter. This will require the government.
WWII.. with the military need for large four engine bombers, stimulated the creation of the airline industry. Few companies would have had the resources, nor the the patience of their shareholders, to invest the quantitie of resources to building one independently. They certainly wouldn't have had the motivation/inclination to develop jet engines for decades without the incentive of the government playing a part.
And look at the internet. Developed as a means of providing data and communications continuity in the event of a nuclear war, it has developed into one of the strongest economic forces in the history of our nation. It has enabled the concept of virtual business, and assisted in the transition from "bricks and mortars" marketing, to the tremendous marketing force of online sales.
This, in my opinion, is a practical role for government in the private economy. Spurring R&D in high-risk areas lacking the ready profitability that most corporations require to satisfy shareholders.
And without that governmental investment, these major industries would not have contributed to our substantial economic productivity and growth.
But do I believe the government should nationalize a particular industry and actually run it.. Hardly.
Something else I learned over the years. Unfettered Capitalism, unaccountable to the people of the nation, is just as much an enemy to our freedoms as centralized governmental control of the means of production (Communism).
Capitalism is a TOOL to facilitate democratic form of society, not the end all, be all, that must be pursued no matter what the societal cost to the environment and other social goods.
Hawk |
