The other point that he and his liberal friends miss is that the TRANS-Continental Railroads wwere built by private industry without government “infrastructure” money. There wasn’t even an income tax then.
I think that you will find that the Union Pacific and Central Pacific had substantial backing from the Federal government.
Actually only one of the transcontinental railroads (US) was privately financed, the “Great Northern”. The real gaffe overlooked here is the premise that the transcontinental railroad was a great success. See:
http://mises.org/daily/2317
The whole discussion on market entrepreneurs vs. political entrepreneurs is quite enlightening, but specific to this discussion, scroll down to the section “James J. Hill versus the Real Robber Barons”.
“You had to go to college to say something that stupid”.
— Dennis Prager