Certain projects are just too big for private enterprise.
Take the Interstate Highway system, for example. It's financed through motor fuels taxes so users are paying for it, not taxpayers through the general fund. The benefits, though, of a unified system of superhighways is beyond calculation. However, to gain maximum benefit we need that superhighway to go through the vast expanses of Wyoming and South Dakota, something private industry couldn't justify.
Airports, by the way, are funded through a trust funded by taxes on airline tickets, not appropriations from the general fund.
The internet started as a government project, by the way, and was finally turned over to private industry decades later. Why didn't private industry build the first internet? Why would they even dream of it when they were so limited in imagination:
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, President, Chairman and Founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
“640k ought to be enough for anybody.” – Bill Gates, Co–Founder and CEO of Microsoft, 1981
Thankfully, someone in DARPA spent some of the taxpayers money on that crazy idea called ARPANET and hid the expense in the black section of the defense budget. |
