Replies to post #4502 on The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[oldberkeley]

The us gov't did not subsidize development of the infrastructure for the auto and gasoline industry other than to build roads and part of the motivation for that was for defense purposes. It was obvious to everyone with a brain that petroleum was more advantageous than whale oil, coal, and horses for transportation in the early 1900s; however, the govt didn't fund Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Schwab...

You’re repeating the same factually incorrect but popular notion about some mythological time in history when the government and private enterprise were two separate entities. That has never been the case.

The government—city, county, state and federal—worked with, partnered with, subsidized Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie and thousands of other businessmen in many hundreds of ways for the good of both parties and the good of the country.

The government of Washington, Jefferson and Madison had the same relationship—financially, socially and even militarily—with businesses of their day. So has every administration, each in their own way, up to the present.

So has every government in recorded history. I’m scratching my head trying to think how one could support the idea that Ramses II or Caesar or Elizabeth or Shaka, for that matter, much less Lincoln, Roosevelt or Reagan did not subsidize in some way the businesses in their nations. No government could otherwise exist, unless you're talking about Utopia.

To pretend that the powerful industrialists of our 19th and 20th centuries were some Horatio Alger-like lone wolves refusing all aid is not an accurate picture of the two-sides-of-the-same-coin reality that is civilized, governed society.