The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by the United States government in collaboration with private commercial interests to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks. The funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks. The commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international network resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2011 more than 2.2 billion people—nearly a third of Earth's Human population—used the services of the Internet.


But the real issue is quite simple really. How many cars would Henry Ford have sold if he had had to build each one himself How much
steel would Cornelius Vanderbilt have been able to produce if he had to do all the smelting on his own? How much oil would John D Rockefeller been able to sell if he had only his own 2 hands and back with which to drill? How would Apple get their products from China to the US without the ports built by hundreds of workers and paid for by government? How would those products get to the stores without the roads that millions of workers built and government paid for.

thanks

Trying to win that argument by not allowing facts to count means they've already lost. That's what the statement "you didn't build that on your own" means. Government helped you build your business. They may not like to acknowledge that or they may have only been listening to faux and their ilk and therefor really don't even understand what they're arguing about. There is no real argument.

Part of my rebuttal includes the fact that there are levels of "basic" services you get from the government - how many police and how many fire departments, how many students per teacher, etc. States that are poorer tend to have fewer police and more students per teacher, more pollution, more roads/bridges in need of repair, etc. (I recall a few years back, when either Alabama or Mississippi refused to raise taxes, they had to cut the state police back to where only two state cops patrolled the state at night - the entire state.)

It takes 2 to make a baby for instance.
Without the DNA of the parents, nobody would exist, right?

It takes 24 players to make one baseball team.

It takes alot of millions of people to elect a president

It takes a person with knowledge of fixing a ball return, so that the owner of a bowling alley
can rent lanes.

It takes a plummer to make your toilet work
and who knows how many people to make toilet paper

etc.

which was not a "basic government service" available ...

They benefit from copyright and trademark laws, patent laws, and courts that we all pay to keep up in taxes. Many receive tax breaks and subsidies from state and local governments for locating in certain areas, under the pretext that they will support local economies through jobs, while many, at the same time outsource as much as possible.

Some, while receiving local tax breaks and subsidies, then employ illegals who they do not have to pay SSI or income tax on, at ridiculously reduced wages, and saving what they would have paid by employing a local worker. In essence, double dipping the system. The seek to hire the best and brightest when it comes to education, yet they don't want to fund the public education, libraries, universities that indirectly helps them at the cost of public at large.

They expect to privatize profits, While always seeking to subsidize their losses.

thanks!

They directly benefit by piggybacking on government funded research, and discoveries. Through grants and business loans we all subsidize through tax dollars. I don't know if it's so much that they fail to see it, or that they simply choose not to see it. Talk about an "entitlement" mentality!

in the American Southwest.

and from none other than Abraham Lincoln and his Congress.

1860 Presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln spent $100,000, twice as much as opponent Stephen Douglas (Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, The Buying of the President, Avon Books, 1996, p. 17, citing Louise Overacker, Money in Elections, Macmillan, 1932, p. 71n). Lincoln had been a lawyer for railroads, including the Illinois Central, which had received a land grant with Douglas' support. In 1860, Lincoln and his friend Norman B. Judd, attorney for the Rock Island Railroad, arranged to give discount rates to anyone who woul d come to Chicago for the Republican national convention (Lewis, p. 17, citing Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairire Years, p. 244). Railroad officials joined Lincoln's administration, and Lincoln granted more land to railroads than any other president (Lewis, p. 17, citing Philip H. Burch, Jr., Elites in American History, Holmes & Meier, 1980, p. 6-7).

1862 Lincoln signed the first Pacific Railway bill. The Union Pacific-Central Pacific land grant (12 Stat. 489, Ch. 120, July 1, 1862), amended in 1864 (13 Stat. 356, Ch. 216, July 2, 1864), resulted in the Credit Mobilier scandal. The Union Pacific got more than eleven million acres and $27 million in bonds; the Central Pacific got eight million acres and $24 million in bonds.

1862 St. Paul & Pacific incorporated (Minnesota state grants in 1857 and 1862 gave ten sections per mile of track, for a total of 3,256,790 acres).

1864 Pacific Railroad Act doubled the CP and UP land grants from 10 to 20 miles of alternating sections for each mile of road built, and arranged for earlier release of federal loans of $32,000 to $48,000 per mile of road (Time-Life, The Railroaders, p. 68).

http://www.landgrant.org/history.html

That enabled the development of the West and made it possible for so many to "Go West, Young Man, Go West."

It was a major grant. It made the farms of the Midwest and West far more valuable than they had been because it permitted farmers to get their livestock to the Chicago stock yards more easily.

Then there was the Erie Canal.

A man named Jesse Hawley while in debtors' prison during 1807-8 wrote up a plan to connect the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Hawley's plans were influential enough to bring the project to the attention of the mayor of New York City, DeWitt Clinton, who became a strong supporter of the idea. New York State Legislature in 1808 appropriated funds for a survey of possible routes for such a canal.

The Legislature in 1810 created a Canal Commission and appointed its members. The Commissioners immediately requested financial aid from the Federal Government. The politicians Jeffersonian Republican Party, later known as the Democratic Party, had doubts that there was any legal basis in the Constitution for any Federal Government involvement in such development projects. Thomas Jefferson himself disparaged the project as sheer madness. The Constitution was explicit in that only those powers delineated were exercised by the Federal Government, all other powers were the province of the state government. Only by absurdly broad interpretation of the empowerment clauses in the Constitution has the Federal Government been able to assume the powers it has today. The Hamiltonian Federalist and later Whig Party had no qualms about the Federal Government assuming an activists role in economic development. With Jeffersonian politicians in power the request of the Canal Commission of New York for the funding of a canal system was turned down. Also the requests for financial aid from states adjacent to New York were dismissed. These had even less chance of a positive response than the request to the Federal Government.

The War of 1812 started soon after the Canal Commission came into being. During the duration of that war, 1812 to 1814, the economy prospered but the limitations of the transportation system was sorely felt.

In 1817 Congress did pass an act providing for the funding of a canal for New York but President James Madison, a Jeffersonian Democrat, vetoed the bill. That same year DeWitt Clinton, a Jeffersonian Democrat, was elected to the governorship of New York. Clinton was a strong supporter of the canal. With Governor Clinton's support a bill was passed which provided for the construction of two canals. The Western Canal, later called the Erie Canal, was to connect Lake Erie with the Hudson River. The Northern Canal was to connect Lake Champlain with the Hudson River.

More at

http://www.applet-magic.com/eriecanal.htm

Then there was the Tennessee Valley Authority.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected by the Great Depression. The enterprise was a result of the efforts of Senator George W. Norris of Nebraska. TVA was envisioned not only as a provider, but also as a regional economic development agency that would use federal experts and electricity to rapidly modernize the region's economy and society.

TVA's service area covers most of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small slices of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. It was the first large regional planning agency of the federal government and remains the largest. Under the leadership of David Lilienthal ("Mr. TVA&quot , TVA became a model for America's governmental efforts to modernize Third World agrarian societies.[1]

. . . .

Even by Depression standards, the Tennessee Valley was in sad shape in 1933. Thirty percent of the population was affected by malaria, and the average income was only $639 per year, with some families surviving on as little as $100 per year.[citation needed] Much of the land had been farmed too hard for too long, eroding and depleting the soil. Crop yields had fallen along with farm incomes. The best timber had been cut, with another 10% of forests being burnt each year.[citation needed]

TVA was designed to modernize the region, using experts and electricity to combat human and economic problems.[5] TVA developed fertilizers, taught farmers ways to improve crop yields and helped replant forests, control forest fires, and improve habitat for fish and wildlife. The most dramatic change in Valley life came from TVA-generated electricity. Electric lights and modern home appliances made life easier and farms more productive. Electricity also drew industries into the region, providing desperately needed jobs. The TVA revitalized a vast area of ruined rural America by building dams to provide cheap electricity.[6]
TVA's first board (L to R): Harcourt Morgan, Arthur E. Morgan, and David Lilienthal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Authority

Those are just a few really huge government projects. Think about Small Business Administration loans or NASA with its many discoveries about new materials and new ways of doing things. NASA discoveries are used by entrepreneurs to create products that we buy and use in our daily lives. Same for the National Institute of Health that does some really basic research that is used by doctors and entrepreneurs for profit. And how about all the university research funded by doctors. And, while we like to credit people like Bill Gates with the creation of our internet, in fact, the computer itself exists in large part because of government projects and funding. The US military was already using computers in 1958 when Bill Gates was a small child. Then think about nuclear energy, satellites.

Our model tends to be basic research funded by the government and used by private individuals to invent new products and services from which the private individuals profit greatly. And then some of those individuals don't want to pay their taxes. What fools! Biting the hands that fed them.

thanks.

I wonder if any private company would have brought electricity to the rural south if the federal government hadn't done it?

Was mainly responsible for electrifying much of rural America. He pushed for it! He too was labeled "socialist". But he brought America back from the brinks of starvation. For his time, and the time and circumstances faced by our country, I think he was one of the greatest Presidents we have ever had.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

And too much risk in just one project. Plus lack of imagination.

Further, the people in the area, the economy of the area that was served by the TVA showed little promise of profit for a private company investing in electricity there.

So, no. I don't think private companies would have done the TVA project. It was an enormous project and involved a lot beyond rural electrification.

Thanks for all that! May I copy and save that so I can repost it when I'm next confronted with the ignorance?

Thanks.

I've know a number of commercial airline pilots that were trained in the military first. I don't know how relevant that is, but I would think that it gave them a head start in getting their flight hours, as well as basic training before attending the flight schools required by the airlines.

wouldn't have been if the Government didn't need Penicillin during the war...the feds pretty much built that. The titans that built their industries wouldn't have made it without government contracts - like the Panama Canal, The Niagara Hydroelectric Plant, Hoover Damn, the railroads. The Electric Company would be no where without the grid. The gas companies need the pipelines, but they don't want to buy all the land they run in, so how do you think they get help with that? Oh, yeah...the federal government. Hell, Paul Ryan's family would have been just two-bit contractors if they hadn't gotten most of the road contracts here in WI. and that was cronyism.

This used to be America not to long ago and without our Gov. disease control it still could be.[link:|

So those highways have to get repaved more frequently to help only corporations sending their product to market.

Hoover dam, etc.

"We won, bitches. So I don't have to take your straw man seriously."

Of course, the article is too long with too many big words for a Freeper, but there's a nice piece on SpaceX that, while touting the advantages of their management style over NASA and the established aerospace industry, also acknowledges their debt to decades of NASA research: