A Rambling, Incoherent Mess III

Apparently, I'm not the only one who was bothered by this speech.  Some have even pointed out how poorly constructed it is.  But I'll push on anyway.

In Part III, we look at this paragraph.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

In the first three sentences, President Obama seems to be echoing John Donne.  Have you ever heard anyone argue that any rich people have never interacted with another human being, either directly or indirectly?  Of course everyone had teachers, of course, they must have purchased something at some point manufactured by someone else.  These points are not in dispute!  It's another Obama strawman.

Then he transitions from interactions with private citizens to interactions with groups.  Notice, first it was 'you had a teacher,' then 'you used roads.'  Then, the great leap.  Because you've used resources that others provided, you accomplished nothing.  You deserve no credit for what you've done with those resources.  The people who provided the resources deserve the credit. 

Keep in mind that many of those resources were privately provided, too.  The takeaway must be that all products, all innovations are ultimately because of roads and bridges and teachers, things provided by government.  The government is responsible for everything in our lives.  One could make the argument that nothing in government would be possible without successful people paying taxes, which is also true but completely contradictory.

The point is that these resources provided by the government are generally equally available to all citizens.  But it's select citizens who are smart, work hard, and sometimes inspired that take those resources (along with goods and services provided by the free market) to offer a new product and service that everyone else values.  This is how they become successful.

Lastly, the government did not create the internet so that businesses could make money off of it.  The Department of Defense created the internet to aid their communications. Businesses saw the potential of the internet and invested in it, developed it, and profited from it.  If corporations had not invested in the internet, there would be no internet, I doubt its potential could have been realized.

Alternatively, if the government hadn't invested in the internet, I believe it still would have eventually developed. It was too profitable not too, and the idea wasn't so complicated that no one would have thought of it.