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To: Swordmaker
In actual fact, the private sector invented it.
Socialists love to use euphemisms - “society” when they mean government,“liberal” or “progressive" when they mean socialist, and so on. What is needed, I’m sure you will agree, is a word which falls between the government, on the one hand, and the individual, on the other. “The private sector” is a coinage which was intended to sound bad compared to “the public sector.” The word we need actually exists in the language, tho the socialists have labored to evade its proper usage:
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil . . .- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

It is not the individual, alone, nor is it the government, which accomplishes things in America and the world.

I, Pencil is an article written in 1958 by Leonard E. Read. The burden of the article is how diffuse are the inputs to make a simple item like a pencil. Of course a particular company - Eberhard Faber, in the example instance - made the pencil. But Mr. Eberhard and Mr. Faber did not simply speak the pencil into existence; the company has to have buildings housing machinery, and workers to operate the machines. But beyond that, the Eberhard Faber workers have to have food, shelter, and normal amenities - including those required by their families.

And the same is true of the vendors who supply Eberhard Faber with the machinery they require, and all the obvious materials - wood, graphite, rubber, and the ferrule material and the enamel. All those vendors have their own equipment, workers, and supply chain. And in all cases the workers need food, shelter, and normal amenities. So although the pencil certainly does not exist without Eberhard Faber, society - people working cooperatively and voluntarily - together to make the pencil.

It is perfectly true that Steve Jobs had a lot of help making the iPhone. It is also true, however, that the role of the government in the process was, while not nonexistent, very easy to overstate. Ms. Pelosi herself, in all her efforts in Congress over the course of decades, never - I venture to say - lifted a finger specifically with the objective of furthering the development of the iPhone as such. Steve Jobs, and not any government factotum, had the vision - say rather, labored to create the vision - of the iPhone. He then enlisted cooperation from many others - chip makers, researchers, designers - to give that vision concrete, readily producible form. He then proceeded to convince a great many people to pay to obtain an iPhone.

And the government, certainly Nancy Pelosi, undertook none of the risk of the entire venture. The government’s contributions, such as they were, were in comparison utterly unfocused and unfruitful.


16 posted on 06/11/2016 4:25:51 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion ('Liberalism' is a conspiracy against the public by wire-service journalism.)
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

It is far more likely that the government created roadblocks to the invention of the iPhone. Nearly any businessperson can tell you about numerous times when the government caused them delays and extra costs due to excessive regulations. Very few business people can tell you about the government helping them. (Ok, Solyndra. But I’m talking about successful businesses, not welfare programs for government cronies.)


21 posted on 06/12/2016 6:54:16 PM PDT by generally
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