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Quote by: bishop i think it's worthwhile to speculate nonetheless.. just using the internet as an example (or satellites, etc.), many of these truly innovative inventions were never economically viable in the beginning - not even close.
i just raise the example of the internet to illustrate that government intervention isn't always wasteful or counterproductive - as the LP's mantra suggests. sometimes it's very useful. |
OK. Let's go with something to speculate on. As has been pointed out by libertarian science fiction author L. Neil Smith, the government parasitically takes 50% of the production of our economy through taxation. They take another 50% (at least) of the potential productivity of our economy through regulation.
OK. Let's speculate.
What could the American economy have produced with four times the technological progress over the past 100 years? What could the American economy have produced with four times the resources over the past 100 years?
And, remember, this is all cumulative and exponential.
Hell, I think we would have had flying cars, personal laser rifles, lunar communities, intergalactic travel, unlimited power resources with no pollution, the internet for free for everybody everywhere in the world, a perfect international missile defense. I think that almost anything you could imagine would have been done.
And all of that should have been available by the last quarter of the last century.
Compared to a 4x annual improvement in technology and living standards, what has the government provided us?
Keith