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Technology Stocks : LAST MILE TECHNOLOGIES - Let's Discuss Them Here -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crossy who wrote (11483)	6/19/2001 1:46:25 PM
From: Raymond Duray	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12823

Hi Crossy, You seem to point out that real life situations are mostly not ripe for this. Maybe I should then respond with: YET ! As with your comments on Say's Theorem, I'm getting the impression that your views may be more colored by academia and an idealized version of reality than my own. I'm certainly a practical man, if nothing else. I found over the course of my career as a building contractor that the usefulness of erudition usually ends when I asked someone to take their wallet off their hip. Then reality sets in. As for instance the Gildertech website. For the world's leading guru of capacious bandwidth to have such a niggardly offering on the Web was highly ironic, in an academic sense, but completely understandable from my perspective that it was, after all, a business and profits aren't made by giving away services and products. The market has simply taken the wise course of action on George Gilder's admonitions to "build it and they will come". The market has decided to "do as I do, and not as I say." Say's Theorem? Academic poppycock, IMNVHO. There are much better ways to explain the growth of new industries. My pet theory is that it is all based on corporate welfare. Why did the railroads succeed, especially in the US in the wild territories of this country in the mid-19th Century? Because of vast givings of public land to the railroad developers. Why did the airline industry succeed? Because of vast public investment in infrastructure. Why did electrical power move from being a regional and local industry to a national behemoth? Because of vast public investment. Why is the interstate trucking industry eating the railroads lunch? Because of vast public infrastructure spending. Why can I have this discussion with you, right now, and oh so conveniently? Because of the less than vast, but just as surely subsidized public spending on DARPAnet, NSFnet and all the ancillary standards and systems organizations that government organizes. Private initiative and markets are all well and good, especially in the greeting card industry. But when society really needs to do some heavy lifting, I can think of nothing that gets done without the beneficent hand of governments, like it or not. The private sector is simply too venal, too profit-oriented and too short of attention span to deal with the real big picture. That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it. Best, Ray -Ray