Well. we wouldn't have TESLA. or SolarCity. or SpaceX. Modern genomics may still be a decade out. There would be no Silicon Valley. We would probably have something sort of like the internet, but it would be a pay per packet and net neutrality wouldn't even be discussed; we would probably just be kvetching about how expensive it is to email stuff between PRODIGY and COMPUSERV.
There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york. There would be no rural phone service; heck, there probably wouldn't be an electrical grid in rural areas.
There would be no enforcement of labor laws, so there would be no weekends (not that there are weekends now...)
Each bank would be issuing it's own currency, but it probably wouldn't be TOO horrible, cause it's in each of the bank's best interest to publish exchange rates between east coast and west coast banks (probably on PRODIGY.) And yes, the federal reserve is not perfect, but manipulating monetary policy to avoid credit crises and to at least try to encourage full employment and low (or at least stable) inflation is sort of cool.
We could all use bitcoin, of course, but deflationary currency is even worse than fiat currency.
There would be no affordable medical insurance for the poor, sick or old.
No national parks, but maybe there would be land trusts. Hard to say if private land trusts would be better or worse, but they would certainly be more expensive to consumers.
And sure, Xe/Blackwater are great, but if I'm going to have someone fight a war, I'm putting my money on the Marines (and begrudgingly, I have to admit the Air Force is pretty ossm as well.)
There 'aint no way anyone on wall street is going to police themselves, a "privatized" SEC is sort of laughable.
SpaceX, and all of the private space companies, are built using the results of government research, primarily during the space race. Potentially better systems, like the aerospike engine, are too expensive for a commercial company to develop (eg, https://youtu.be/K4zFefh5T-8?t=567 )
"Modern genomics" because human genome project started in the 1980s as a DOE project, then switched over to NIH. Celera had a private venture which finished at about the same time as the public one, but that was in part because it depended on public data. The publicly funded genomic effort really pushed the development of the genome sequencing field.
Silicon Valley started because of the government funding for aerospace and microwaves and electronics through military/industry contracting in the Bay Area. Eg, Lockheed Missiles Division in Sunnyvale in the 1960s was the largest employer in what became Silicon Valley. - https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ .
The interstate highway started because of Eisenhower. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System points out, "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".
Now, you could certainly argue that there are other ways to get to where we are, but claiming retrocryptid's comments have little or no support seems more a statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.
The thing is, for every thing you said that includes "was because of" or some variant, the reality is that we don't have access to the counter-factual cases. We don't have any way of knowing, for example, if we would have Interstate Highways or not, had the federal government not been involved.
The same can be said for electrification, the Internet, etc.
statement of ignorance about history than a solid position.
I'm very familiar with the history. My point is that that is irrelevant, because, again, we don't know - and can't know - anything about the counter-factuals. To say, for example "we wouldn't have the Internet today without the USG" is speculation.
But then you reply with "we don't know - and can't know - anything about counter-factuals." Who knows - perhaps the South would have succeeded anyway even if there hadn't been slavery.
I may assert that the Manhattan Project was a result of Einstein and Szilárd's letter to Roosevelt. You can reply with the same quote. Maybe someone else besides the most famous physicist in the world would have written a similar letter, and started the effort. You might be right, but the existing causal chain is pretty clear.
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Is there any description of likely historical causation which you cannot respond to with a claim that it's "a lot of speculation with little or nothing to support it"?
Your view appears to reject the study of history as a valid means of inquiry.
I certainly agree that a lot of the apparent causal chains that we take for granted are very suspect. But it's deeper than that. One can say "The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the cause of WWI" and maybe that's true in a sense. But if Ferdinand had not been assassinated, would there still have been a great war in Europe? I think there are a lot of reasons to suspect so.. maybe it would have started a few months or years later, and maybe the details would have worked out different... who knows? That's the problem with history: by definition we only get access to one view of things.
Now, IF the universe truly is strictly deterministic and things can happen only one way, then I guess it's all a moot point. But I'm not sure I accept that.
You'll note though that Wikipedia's entry starts "The causes of World War I remain controversial." and says:
> The immediate causes lay in decisions made by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914. This crisis was triggered by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by the Bosnian-Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip who had been supported by a nationalist organization in Serbia.
While in the example I gave, it's certain that defense of slavery was the primary reason for the US Civil War. Or, are you really not willing to accept even that?
Go back to retrocryptid's statement "There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york"
We can look at the interstate system and see that "Some large sections of Interstate Highways that were planned or constructed before [the Federal Aid Highway Act of] 1956 are still operated as toll roads".
This lends support retrocryptid's statement, while you said there was little to no support for any of those statements.
There would be no interstate highway system, only a collection of toll roads that went between los angeles and new york. There would be no rural phone service; heck, there probably wouldn't be an electrical grid in rural areas.
There would be no enforcement of labor laws, so there would be no weekends (not that there are weekends now...)
Each bank would be issuing it's own currency, but it probably wouldn't be TOO horrible, cause it's in each of the bank's best interest to publish exchange rates between east coast and west coast banks (probably on PRODIGY.) And yes, the federal reserve is not perfect, but manipulating monetary policy to avoid credit crises and to at least try to encourage full employment and low (or at least stable) inflation is sort of cool.
We could all use bitcoin, of course, but deflationary currency is even worse than fiat currency.
There would be no affordable medical insurance for the poor, sick or old.
No national parks, but maybe there would be land trusts. Hard to say if private land trusts would be better or worse, but they would certainly be more expensive to consumers.
And sure, Xe/Blackwater are great, but if I'm going to have someone fight a war, I'm putting my money on the Marines (and begrudgingly, I have to admit the Air Force is pretty ossm as well.)
There 'aint no way anyone on wall street is going to police themselves, a "privatized" SEC is sort of laughable.