Chanting Points Memo: Why Yes – We Did Build It

“You didn’t build that”.

President Obama said it to America’s entrepreneurs during the campaign; the not-remotely-muted message was that “private sector innovation follows public sector investment” – that without roads, there’d be no car company; without airports, there’d be no aircraft. 

On the state level, one of Governor Messinger’s budget czars made essentially the same statement at a meeting of government and business leaders in Thief River Falls last year; without government to build the infrastructure, entrepreneurship would be doomed to failure. 

On the one level, it’s wrong – unless the entrepreneurs and their employees not only weren’t paying plenty of taxes, but hadn’t already paid their taxesforall that infrastructure all of their lives, and their parents, and grandparents, back to statehood. 

But even beyond that – and I can’t believe I and many other conservative pundits didn’t note this at the time?   It’s just not true; infrastructure tends to follow innovation.

A great example – which came first, the car or the road?

Henry Ford and dozens of other auto makers put a car in almost every garage decades before the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1956. The success of the car created a demand for roads. The government didn’t build highways, and then Ford decided to create the Model T. Instead, the highways came as a byproduct of the entrepreneurial genius of Ford and others.

Read a little about the history of the automobile.  When cars were expensive, handmade playthings of the wealthy, roads, were few, far between, and largely wretched outside the cities, where they existed at all.  The normal “road” in the greater US in 1900 was a cow path or a wagon trail.  Early cars were as likely to be found driving along railroad tracks as anywhere else. 

And what happened next?  A huge federal road-building initiative? 

No!  Ford mass-produced the Model T, which brought the car financially into reasonable reach for working-class Americans.  Other auto makers followed suit. 

And then the roads got built: 

 

Moreover, the makers of autos, tires and headlights began building roads privately long before any state or the federal government got involved. The Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway for cars, pieced together from new and existing roads in 1913, was conceived and partly built by entrepreneurs—Henry Joy of Packard Motor Car Co., Frank Seiberling of Goodyear and Carl Fisher, a maker of headlights and founder of the Indy 500.

And this was the pattern for advance after advance in industry and “infrastructure”; the canal boat led to the government canal; the burgeoning steamship industry led to everything from seaports to the taming of the Mississippi; commerce, not Algore or even the Department of Defense, built the Internet. 

And the business in Thief River Falls which Governor Messinger’s budget apparatchik owed its existence to infrastructure?   Not only had they paid their fair share for the infrastructure that exists (more than their fair share, actually, given Minnesota’s business taxes) over the past 40 years, but it was the company’s existence that gave Thief River Falls the need for significant infrastructure in the first place. 

It’s time government – especially the arrogant, preening, narcissistic variety practiced by the DFL – learn its place.

37 thoughts on “Chanting Points Memo: Why Yes – We Did Build It

  1. And another thing…
    Our vaunted Eisenhower Interstate Highway System wasn’t built out of some bureaucrats far sighted view or love for entrepreneurs. Eisenhower was inspired by the way the Germans could move military equipment across their country and his own experience trying to move a convoy from East coast to West coast on the patchwork of city and state routes that existed after WWI. Our ‘creative’ best & brightest transportation engineers merely followed the same routes the pioneers created with their wagons.
    Of course when the fuel taxes started rolling in (with massive surpluses after the highway bonds were paid off) all kinds of bureacratic wet dreams could be fulfilled from light rail to bicycle paths, etc. Oh and if your state didn’t properly bend knee or bow head towards the latest fashion from the NHTSB (such as speed limits or blood alcohol content, etc) the funds paid in from your state could be withheld.
    Then to have these people turn around and point the finger at the public for the lack of infrastructure spending? Or take credit for some entrepreneurial success that happened close to some highway? What’s the word? Chutzpah?
    PS: I heard a story when I moved here that grain millers paid to have the Mississippi dredged to make way for grain barges to transport their products from south of St Paul to the four corners of the earth.

  2. And the whole thing is silly. So lets say that we do need the gov’t to build highways, and provide police and fire protection.

    So does that mean we have to accept the gov’t taxing and borrowing to spend on things like Obamaphones, human rights czars, gay lesbian studies, EBT cards to be spent in Chicago liquor stores, adding $8,000,000 to just one contract on the Stillwater bridge so more out-of-staters with darker hued skin can be brought in, to fly Obama’s dog to and from vacation, and on and on and on and on.

  3. We could also mention the Great Northern. Hill took a bankrupt, subsidized railroad, and turned it around and made it transcontinental without a penny of subsidies. It’s the only transcontinental railroad built without government subsidies.

  4. Hey, Chuck: You’ve gone too far now. Flying the president’s dog on a private flight IS a legitimate form of government – BECAUSE – he won. You republicans will continue to suffer the slings and arrows of the media as long as you deny the fact that the winner gets to do whatever he wants.

    End of story. (*sarcasm off).

  5. I dislike the premise that government and business can be thought of as economic rivals, as if politics can be reduced to a statement like ‘give corporations your money if you want iPads, give government your money if you want roads’. Corporations are governed by a board of directors, who represent shareholders, who desire to make money. Government isn’t arranged at all like this, it has no legitimate goals of its own. It is not like a board of directors, the government is about values, and making dollars is only one of a competing set of voter interests.
    Government didn’t build roads to allow businesses to make money, it built roads because voters demanded that it build roads.
    If government can take the credit for building roads, it also has to take the blame for not building roads, or failing to regulate banks properly.

  6. “Small Boy in the Big Woods” by Nobel Shadduck recounts life in rural Wright County, Minnesota, at the turn of the last century, long before electricity or indoor plumbing. In addition to paying taxes, every man was required to bring his team of horses to work three days per year on the township roads, hauling gravel by wagon, spreading it by shovelfull, pulling a plow to level it.

    Didn’t build that? The Hell you say.

  7. Per Joe’s comment, it used to be very standard for city building owners to be required to maintain the roads in front of their buildings. Taxes were also assessed based on building width, which is why you see so many long, narrow buildings in old European cities. :^)

    Also per Joe’s comment, a friend of mine and I managed to tow an old time grader (meant for a team of horses) with his minivan. It was a blast, and yes, we built that road. Here’s the link.

    http://bikebubba.blogspot.com/2009/05/got-high-tech-job-in-wisconsin.html

  8. Elon Musk didn’t build that:

    That´s the high-concept technology behind the high-speed transit concept that billionaire Elon Musk calls the Hyperloop. Musk – who already plays leading roles in the SpaceX rocket venture, the Tesla electric car company and the SolarCity solar-energy company – unveiled what he has called the “alpha” version of the Hyperloop plan in a blog post on Monday.

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/musk-unveils-plans-10-billion-203700460.html
    Ever notice how many of Musk’s projects require taxpayer subsidies? Even SpaceX needs government money to run. Socialize the risks, privatize the profits. Not a bad business plan, unless you are a net tax payer.

  9. Seflores; ah, those were the days! When private business owners didn’t have government “help” to get their goods to market, they improvised and adapted. Their reward? Once they made the river more navigable, they brought in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to take over the management, saying what could and couldn’t be done!

  10. The interstate system was a worthy investment because it provided efficient middle-class mobility for a middle-class nation, while also increasing the flexibility of commercial transport in a nation where the economy was straining at the limitations of freight rail.

    A truly useful and breakthrough transport technology would combine the flexibility of a highway network with the speed and efficiency of high-speed rail. A system where individual (light freight and passenger) pods, autonomously piloted, travel at high speed and low fuel consumption on main trunk lines but branch to roads to complete the journey would truly be a 21st century breakthrough, yielding true leaps of efficiency and productivity. The technology to complete that 21st century system is very close, and economic rewards will come to regions who invest in it first.

    High-speed rail remains a 19th century technology with 21st century bells and whistles. The economic gains of a rail network were fully realized in most countries by the early 20th century. High-speed rail offers only marginal gains, if any. Investing billions in high-speed rail networks cements in place a restrictive and outmoded transport system when something truly new and innovative is just on the horizon.

  11. A truly useful and breakthrough transport technology would combine the flexibility of a highway network with the speed and efficiency of high-speed rail. A system where individual (light freight and passenger) pods, autonomously piloted, travel at high speed and low fuel consumption on main trunk lines but branch to roads to complete the journey would truly be a 21st century breakthrough, yielding true leaps of efficiency and productivity.

    In my country, Emery, we call these ‘automobiles”.

  12. I read of a study showing that if even 10% of vehicles have sensors and automation to maintain correct spacing with the vehicle in front (adaptive cruise control, a fairly common luxury feature these days), the entire rush hour traffic flow is significantly faster which generates higher capacity.

    I honestly think that many of the children being born in 2013 won’t learn to drive, and won’t be licensed to drive. That may overstate things just a bit because vehicles have a lifetime of up to 20 years these days, but I bet we end up retrofitting existing cars. It’s going to cost perhaps 10-30% to insure a driverless car relative to a human-piloted car. That’s a minimum of $1000 a year worth of incentive to a) purchase and b) retrofit to a pilotless vehicle. When regulators allow those cars to be lighter because they get in fewer accidents, the cost savings is even greater. While it will be terribly disruptive, this could bring a real windfall to the auto companies that have the first practical pilotless vehicles for a reasonable price. Much of that windfall might flow to the makers of the software and sensor array (tip of the hat to Google).

  13. Emery-
    I don’t think the tech is quite there.
    I was on the mainland in July, in Wisconsin. I hate airplanes. I would have loved to have flown from Hawaii to the West coast and taken the train to Minneapolis from there.
    There were two options:
    1) Fly to LA. Go to the LA Greyhound bus station. A bus takes you to Bakersfield. Take Amtrak to Minneapolis from there.
    2) Fly to Portland. Take a cab to the train station. Take Amtrak to Minneapolis from there.
    In either case, the trains don’t always run on time. If your train breaks down between Bakersfiled or Portland and Minneapolis, you get on a charter bus and finish the journey that way. Whoopee!

  14. Elon Musk has a view of the future, and is changing it, which is lacking from our politicians and a few technicians unfortunately.

  15. Lovely – the driverless car will also regulate your speed so that even in an emergency you won’t be able to go over the speed limit, pass someone going slowly, or drive on the shoulder because it will displease some bureaucrat!

  16. Emery, I think you should look at how Musk makes money these days. How he finances his bold visions says a lot about Musk and the current state of our ‘capitalist’ country. Since when is ‘having a view of the future’ cause for admiration?
    Stalin? Hitler?
    Hello!!

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  18. Powhatan Mingo, stoops to using “Godwin’ law”.

    “Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies”
    “Given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis. The law is sometimes invoked prescriptively to mark the end of a discussion when a Nazi analogy is made, with the writer who made the analogy being considered to have lost the argument.”

    Powhatan Mingo, there’s a difference between debate and argument. In a debate, we disagree and refute, but we also listen and learn. In an argument, we call each other names, throw down challenges, and try to score points. The objective of a debate is a broader understanding of an issue, which may lead to some degree of consensus. The objective of an argument is submission by the other party, however rarely that may actually occur.

    Debate more, Argue less. Show some respect.

  19. @MtkaMoose
    Automation is a tricky thing. Computers are much better than humans at keeping something where it is supposed to be, like the speed at a speed limit or a vehicle in a lane. They have an infinite attention span, and always try to follow the rules, two things people are not good at. On the other hand, computers are limited by their inability to recognize that something unusual is happening, like an instrument that gives a false signal. They can only react to things that the programmer has anticipated and spent the time to write a response for. And they can also be hyper-sensitive, for instance shutting down a system if a signal jumps into a danger zone for a fraction of a second because of some (normal) noise in a measurement system. The best automation systems almost always pair automation with a well-trained operator, but hitting the right mix of caution and freedom to operate is always difficult.

  20. I have the following fantasy: I’m in an elevator with MSNBC talking head Rachel Maddow. I reference her commercial spot standing near Hoover Dam in which she extols the importance of government produced infrastructure projects. The door opens on the floor where Ms. Maddow works at 30 Rock. Before she can leave I ask her if she knows who planned, financed and built Rockefeller Center. Hint: it wasn’t the US government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Center#History

  21. Powhatan Mingo, stoops to using “Godwin’ law”.

    There’s a post in the works about invocations of “Godwin”.

    Long story short: I have as little patience for bad “Godwin” calls as I do for bad Nazi analogies.

  22. The economic gains of a rail network were fully realized in most countries by the early 20th century

    Apparently, EmeryTheUSAHater is unaware how much larger The USA is vs those other countries. Nor that freight has priority over passenger traffic in USA vs those other countries. You know, business and prosperity over leisure. To EmeryTheUSA Hater, it is all about Soci@list Utopia where trains run on time to deliver governent slaves from one mandated destination to another.

    Respect is earned, EmeryTheUSAHater. You have yet to make a deposit.

  23. I don’t think that it’s fair to invoke Godwin’s Law on me for my 2:17 post. The example of Hitler was appropriate when discussing the virtue of ‘having a view of the future’, because Emery implied that ‘having a view of the future’ was a good thing.
    What does it mean to change the future, anyhow?

  24. Althouse links to a blog post explaining why Musk’s hyperloop will be very difficult to build: http://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/hyperloop-faces-technical-hurdles
    But if the government picks up the tab, I am certain Musk will try. Good deal for him if he can keep the patents involved in trying and failing. Socialize the risks, privatize the profits.
    I’d like to point out Althouse’s comment at the end of her piece:
    I believe the truly modern technological solution is not to travel at all. Overcome the need to have the body go anywhere. That’s the most efficient answer to our transportation problems.
    http://althouse.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-elon-musks-hyperloop-transport-wont.html

    Now that is a positive vision of the future! Not like Hitler at all!

  25. Powhatan Mingo says: “Since when is ‘having a view of the future’ cause for admiration?
    Stalin? Hitler?”

    “Given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis. ..when a Nazi analogy is made,… the writer who made the analogy being considered to have lost the argument.”

  26. Emery,

    PM didn’t make an analogy. He pointed out that totalitarians ALL have “views of the future” – and that governments “viewing the future” is almost always a bad thing.

    Invoking Godwin’s Law is the lazy man’s idea of debate, no less than sloppy Nazi analogies.

  27. As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!
    -Leon Trotsky

    I wonder if anyone ever asked Trotsky how he knew that the Man of the Future wanted to be master of his history.

  28. MBerg, Are you able to “quote” me invoking anyone? I showed how commenters drop Hitler by name and by inference Nazi’s to finish their comment. Which reminded me of this: “Given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis”.

    Quote where I invoke anyone.

  29. Powhatan Mingo, My note was a general commentary on the reckless and tone of so many of the comments on this particular blog. I am intolerant of intolerance.
    .
    Nothing personal intended.

  30. I am flabbergasted, Emery. What blogs do think have a less reckless tone?
    I used the Hitler/Stalin reference because I thought that your claim that ‘Elon Musk has a view of the future, and is changing it’ revealed sloppy thinking.

  31. invoke: Cite or appeal to (someone or something) as an authority for an action or in support of an argument.

    I would call Emery logic or language intolerant.

  32. “What blogs do think have a less reckless tone?”

    /”so many of the comments on this particular blog.”/

    sloppy thinking?

  33. I realize this is not the Algonquin roundtable. And there is a price to be paid for anonymous posting. But really, Hitler and Nazi’s? Have some respect for yourself and the other commenters.

  34. I realize this is not the Algonquin roundtable.

    Back atcha.

    But really, Hitler and Nazi’s? Have some respect for yourself and the other commenters.

    I minored in German and History. I’ve studied the Nazi era at great depth. I read (a good chunk of) Mein Kampf in German. I ghost-wrote a book of WWII memoirs. And if I make a reference to something in the Nazi era, it will be measured, appropriate to the context at hand, and accurate.

    There are real-life lessons for today to be learned from German history from 1919-1948. It was a rather important part of world history. Doncha think?

    As to “respect”, Emery? PM made a perfectly legitimate point; “A view of the future” isn’t in and of itself a virtue. It’s standard totalitarian fare. Your response was to chant “Godwin’s Law” like some cheeto-dust-caked Usenet wizard, as if that ended the discussion.

    Godwin’s Law is a keen observation on online behavior. It’s also very frequently a red herring in an argument.

  35. I didn’t write this with you in mind, Emery, honest. But I did pull it out of my drafts folder in honor of this discussion.

  36. Quote where I invoke anyone.

    Someone else used the term “Godwin’s Law”. So there’s a point, I suppose…

    …except that you then went on to say ” Which reminded me of this: “Given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis”.”, which is pretty much “Godwin’s Law”.

    But OK. While you yourself cited the “text” of the “law” yourself, by way of defending a tendentious red-herring deflection, fair enough. You didn’t actually say “Godwin’s Law”.

    I sit corrected.

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