Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
find this thread amusing thus far. i thought americans were supposed to be individualists? apparently some on here believe people shouldn't strive to succeed or innovate, because "society" will pick up the slack. lets completely deny the achievements of the individual, it's all thanks to "society".
And you wouldn't have to because no government program created that smartphone. You might try to argue that without government interference there would never be cell service, phone service or electric service in the country (rural areas), but as a person who works in one of those industries I know there is a lot of money to be made by building that infrastructure and providing those services for a fee. That fee might cost a lot more at first, in order to help offset the costs of investment, but that is ALWAYS the case in a free market capitalism system. That bag phone, even as outdated and antiquated as you think it is, was once the BEST technology had to offer, and you can bet it wasn't cheap. So why should the technology, investment and infrastructure be provided to people cheap if it costs the company a lot of money?
I can get a cheap Chinese red display led watch for under $5. But in 1972 Pulsar had one pretty similar to that watch for $2,100.00 My brother had a $200 dollar version in 1978. Innovation and technology costs. It can produce great results, but it costs drastically up front.
You seem to be advocating to disperse those costs to society. Um... would that be that redistribution of wealth thing again?
Thats the point - we have a civil structure and a stable government which allows people to focus on innovation, work and contributing to society. We could have an ideal libertarian environment such as in Somalia where government really does get out of the way and most of the populace is focused on surviving and providing for the most basic of needs by themselves instead of being able to divert their skills to true innovation.
Yours and others' displayed ignorance is utterly amazing!
I love it when idiots preface their posts with assertions like that. I live for irony.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KS_Referee
How did Americans survive when they didn't have all your societal government redistribution of wealth scheme programs? How did a single medicine ever get invented without the FDA?
Although it is not an exclusive causal relationship (although the contribution is huge) not all that well. The FDA was essentially founded in 1906 when Teddy Roosevelt signed into law the Wiley Act. In 1906 the life expectancy at birth for American men was 46.9 years. For women it was 50.8. By 2010 (after roughly a century of the FDA) men had increased that life expectancy 63% for men and 6-% for women to 76.4 and 81.4 years respectively.
And most of that derives from governmental programs to reduce the impact of childhood diseases via vaccines along with public health programs specifically around water and sewage infrastructure.
All of these programs would have been impossible without government participation.
Almost all dissent to these views seems to come from those who hold free market capitalism in contempt. Maybe those of you who completely oppose these ideas would benefit from watching Milton Friedman's Free To Choose series. Here is a link to that series: Common Sense Capitalism: Free to Choose
Does anyone who says ending the income tax would destroy us not realize we have only had the income tax for 100 years yet this nation has been around for almost 250?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
