October 25, 2012
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Revisited: “You didn’t build that”
“Obama, July 13, 2012: There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
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.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”
What can you get out of this? What is the point of this entire little speech?
First, he is not saying that businesses aren’t the result of intelligent people who work hard. There is no escaping the implication he makes, but arguably he wasn’t saying that at all. He was making a much larger point.
What he is saying is that businesses would not be there without the government, that private entities owe their very existence to the government. According to Obama we cannot survive without government. Bridges cannot be built, fires cannot be put out and the internet would not exist without government.
What he is doing is making an argument for bigger government and more control. That the government is the protector, the creators and the keepers of the peace. That the government is the reason we can communicate the way we do and the only reason our houses aren’t all burnt to the ground.
He is championing the idea that, without government, we’d head straight back to the dark ages, completely ignoring the fact that businesses exist, not because of the government, but in spite of the government.
Answer this question; do businesses exist because of the government or in spite of the government? If your answer is the former, then explain how the government has helped. If the latter, how has it gotten in the way? Try arguing both ways, it’s always interesting to see how playing “devils advocate” may expand your view a little.
Comments (23)
You see the same idea in people who really, truly believe that schools, roads, water rights, security, emergency medical services HAVE to be government run, that it is impossible for these things to be taken care of privately. The irony is that, when you can compare a government-run program to a privately run program in the same field, the private one makes more money while offering cheaper and more efficient service. Even more irony, it’s always the really important stuff that gets relegated to what everyone knows is an inefficient and incompetent system, staffed by mostly morons. Honestly, I don’t want the people who mess up my driver’s license to be handling my medical records.
My answer is pretty obvious, so let me try arguing the opposite way…Businesses exist because of the government… hm. Okay, I’ve got it. The businesses that made America’s economy something awesome to behold exist because of our government, founded on freedoms. We can see by looking at other parts of the world that our type of government, based on rights of the individual and limited federal power, is the form most conducive to thriving businesses and economic growth. With a different, more restrictive form of government, these businesses might very well not exist. That’s not what Obama was saying. But you know what? If a businessman needed a road, he would damn well build one himself. That has actually happened, and does happen, so I don’t really get what their point is when they yammer on about the roads.
“Try arguing both ways, it’s always interesting to see how playing “devils advocate” may expand your view a little.”
Love this line. It’s so true; I do it in my history classes all the time. Never hurts to upset the apple cart every once in a while.
As for the premise of your blog… I can understand why you would take the view that President Obama could be calling for bigger government, for further government investment in community needs, and the implication is certainly there.
However, I think that the other, larger, point that President Obama was trying to make is that private-public partnerships are not the horrible Antichrist some of his opposition point it out to be. He’s not saying that without any government America wouldn’t be what it is today, but rather government does have a role to play – it’s just a question of how much. I wouldn’t say that Obama was arguing that businesses couldn’t exist without government, more that they couldn’t be as successful without some government intervention.
I think that some businesses exist BECAUSE of government – through the form of government contracts (e.g. weapons industries), government subsidies (e.g. farmers), government incentives (e.g. space exploration, green energy), and it’s needed because the incentive or expense for private companies or individuals is not compelling enough to make it happen. The only way Americans landed on the moon was the massive injection of funds the government used to set up NASA and make it happen. Even now, with more and more wealthy people, private space travel is still in its infancy.
That said, the mass of government regulation, tax code, and bureaucracy hinders strong private enterprise growth as it inhibits aspects needed for growth. While most businesses would be run ethically without the need for such oversight, the fact remains that a few have besmirched the name of the many thus control and regulations have to be enforced to protect the majority of citizens who have a blind faith that a product or service provided is of high quality. You just have to watch the various investigate shows/segments like NBC’s Rossen Reports to show that some business – not all – are unscrupulous, and without a strong education people will be exploited unfairly.
As with everything in politics, it’s shades of grey. Most issues cannot be reduced to a pure black/white choice, despite what the candidates may say. I believe that candidates must be judged holistically and not on any one issue, although the issues can be weighted for sure. Ultimately, I have more faith in Mr. Obama to work for the interests of all Americans as best he can to create the foundation for a more secure economy that doesn’t result in fiscal meltdown that ends up hurting the entire country. I haven’t heard anything substantial from the Romney/Ryan campaign that I believe would be more effective or is a better plan that the current course we’re currently on under Mr. Obama.
This speech is the edited version (the second paragraph in particular). Here is the unedited version of that paragraph.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. QuantumStorm helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive, thanks to his leadership, brilliance and his personal slave labor force. QuantumStorm invested in roads and bridges by sacrificing his LEGO’s for those projects. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. QuantumStorm made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. QuantumStorm created the Internet with his farts so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. God I love QuantumStorm so much. He makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
Fine, let’s let all these businesses build the roads they need to get their products out. Let them develop their own internet (a government creation), let them pay for the schooling for all their employees from kindergarten up, let them purify their own water which they got on their own from an aquifer or body of water, and feed them food that you yourself made sure was safe to eat, let them buy generators so as to not use the federally-subsidized energy company – this includes drilling and refining their own gasoline.
Corporations depend highly on the foundation that our government has laid down so that they can operate.
It’s funny because using this same ideology,the Government can do nothing at all without successful people,but you turn it back around and successful people can do anything without the Government.Both have their selfish bloodsuckers that are in it ALL for themselves,but their actions soon are seen for what they are and they eventually fall.
Yes,to be successful,EVERYONE needs help from others,thats a no brainer(which is what most liberal thinking is-which also means they don’t fully think things thru)but if all the other helpers didn’t have someone to risk their money to build something and NEED those worker to help,then everyone is up the proverbel creek without a paddle.Why you HURT the very people who create opportunity for others to work.There are different forms ofhard work.A garbage collector can work his butt off at a nasty job and a brain surgeon can do a straight 8 hour surgery.Should they get paid the SAME amount.Of course not.Anyone can empty garbage,but very few can do surgeory on a brain and repair it.This was just a simple example,there are many.
How did the inventor of the bicycle learn to ride it without someone, who knew how to ride, running behind him, holding the seat to teach him balance?
He just fell a few times, but kept trying until he succeeded. Bruises and cuts, bloody knees… We’re trying to prevent these things, but they are good things. They build strength.
His speech, paraphrased:
“You didn’t build the business without government,
So you shouldn’t be trusted to run it w/o gov’t supervision.”
In spite of Government. People don’t want to hire today, because if they do the Employer will have to pay more taxes. Plus all the red tape, rules and regulations. Because of that some people think that it is not even worth starting a business, especially people who are not paperwork saavy.
@WaitingToShrug - …when you can compare a government-run program to a privately run program in the same field, the private one makes more money while offering cheaper and more efficient service. ..
Like Blackwater. They did a great job in Iraq.
@Celestial_Teapot - Law enforcement including military, and courts are the only thing that I think should be government run. They are the essential function of government. I’ve never denied that.
@WaitingToShrug - well said
In spite of government. Government does not generate wealth, they rely on producers to harvest wealth from. If there is a need or a demand for something entrepeneurs will fill it.
My business exists because of DARPA, and only because of DARPA. Just as the businesses of several of my clients could not exist without the internet that was invented at DARPA, and access to which was expanded to the great unwashed masses by the US government, championed by Al Gore. Without the internet there would be no Xanga, no Google, no Amazon, no Facebook…
@GodlessLiberal - Good, lets. If the government hadn’t gone into road building we’d be way beyond the internal combustion engine right now. That’s what you libs want, no?
You can’t have it both ways.
Government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. Whenever it is, everybody loses.
In my opinion the government should BE business. If we turned control of enterprise over to the State, there wouldn’t be so many people out of work and people could earn a decent wage since there wouldn’t be so much emphasis on cost cutting (no competition means no price wars). We also wouldn’t have to worry about rising costs because everyone would earn equal pay so certain privileged people woukdn’t be able to own all the cool stuff while others had to settle for either less or inferior products.
The argument has no substance and is clearly speculative. It is also an underhanded argument because any counter argument would be equally speculative. Yes, the government paved roads and some people in Europe were playing with networking computers and the government got involved–we therefore have an interstate and an internet thanks to government. But at no point could we have had it any other way. “Appeal to Roads”, as I’ll call it, is just vacuous.
Now, his bigger point is “when people work together they can accomplish big stuff”–which is true, it is just a multiplier when people combine efforts. People can and should be free to choose when they want to be part of a multiplied effort. Just because it is in a person’s best interest does not mean anyone has a right to mandate it from all people. That’s just a recipe for failure, since you’ll have to include bad people or people who don’t want to be part of the effort and thus will do a shitty job. Government is exactly that, a mandated team effort that forces everyone to play the game, even if they are the shittiest players who form a chain with numerous bad links. As such, government has been a piece of shit that no one can openly deny.
I love how people say the government is a bunch of morons. Like a bunch of faceless idiots are running everything. Clearly anyone who has said that has never worked in the government or in a public private partnership.
The fact is, businesses want to get on with what they are doing without worrying about things like basic infrastructure and elementary levels of training. Someone has already said this in the discussion above and I’ll repeat it. Businesses do not want to have to build their own roads, educate people from 5 years old on, source their own water, source their own energy, dispose of their own waste, etc. And the fact is, many of these ventures (road-building, water sourcing, etc) would only be profitable if they cost the consumer more. Just look at private water companies for goodness sake! And how about private education? Businesses need to make money enough to break even, and these days many need enough to make their shareholders happy. Heck, if they could be happy with providing a good service, paying their employees a decent wage, investing in progressing the company further and breaking even, maybe privatizing everything would work. As it is, it really wouldn’t.
The point is, there are some things that government’s role in society makes them better equipped to provide just as there are some things that businesses are better equipped to provide. In the case of public private partnerships (and I’ve worked at two of these), they recognize how they can work together to cover each other’s weaknesses and enhance each others’ strengths. The problem with public private partnerships comes when either the government entity or the private investor no longer wishes to inves the time and effort required to fulfill their obligations. This can happen when the government changes hands or when the private investor faces some large issue within their company and focuses on that.
I get really bored of hearing people on both sides act like they know everything about either sector. Most of us don’t know shit. The longer I worked in public private partnerships, the more I realized there was to learn. The infrastructures of civilized nations are seriously complex. When you drive to work and there aren’t any potholes, the shoulders of the road are safe and there are signs and signals to instruct how and where to go, don’t take that for granted. When your kid turns 5 and you register them for kindergarten at the school less than half a mile away, appreciate it. When you live in a safe, clean environment where your electricity works and the tap water is constant and safe to drink, think about all the people working behind the scenes who make that stuff happen.
@Somefishytales - The brain surgeon went to a college/University that may have a lot of government help or partnership with a regulatory agency that the government shelters. The garbage man is usually with public ultility or a private trash agency selected by a government. How many waste disposal companies have no government oversight or not regulated by a government agency? Two examples where very small government would be unable to perform similar to the large government we have today.
@WaitingToShrug - One of the most hated government agency, the DMV also performs the checks that help restrain undocumented immigrants from abusing our roads. I suppose you want our postal service to continue being a private company and go into bankrupcy too.
We are all interconnected to the US Government. Walden wanted to wean off government interference and people should read Thoreau for more tips on being less dependent. However most xangians are connected to the big city life and to really rough it out is a big challenge and is almost impossible.
All those indignant on a strawman argument, that you did/didnot build it. However we do enjoy the benefits of it being built and really ignore the possibility it could have not been built except that we did have a nice environment that did allow it, but will the future be that rough to stop allowing it to happen? I really hope that it will not be that tough to build a nice future.
@WaitingToShrug -
“You see the same idea in people who
really, truly believe that schools, roads, water rights, security,
emergency medical services HAVE to be government run, that it is
impossible for these things to be taken care of privately. The irony is
that, when you can compare a government-run program to a privately run
program in the same field, the private one makes more money while
offering cheaper and more efficient service.”
One, this is true in some cases but it is often misleading because it does not compare like with like. For instance in education private schools do much better, but they do better because they are exclusive and take only the best students. If they had to take the students from bad homes with criminal records, emotional problems, learning disabilities, poor grades etc, etc they would do more or less as well as the public schools. And there is also the matter of access to their services – not nearly every parent could pay out of pocket for their kids to go to school, so either we let only some kids learn to read, write and do math and slide into a nation of illiteracy and permanent poverty, or we use tax dollars to (one way or the other) fund education. Unless you know a business which has every single american as a customer. Businesses are good at many things, but they can’t provide any service continually and universally to everyone and they can’t do things that are not profitable, like providing insurance to seniors and disabled people who have the highest medical costs. Or delivering mail to some bum fuck town with 20 people in it where there isn’t enough business to justify a route. Or defend a nation from an invasion, or feed the poor, or any of a thousand things.
“Even more irony, it’s
always the really important stuff that gets relegated to what everyone
knows is an inefficient and incompetent system, staffed by mostly
morons. Honestly, I don’t want the people who mess up my driver’s
license to be handling my medical records.”
Yes, there are no morons in the private sector. You get the wrong form at the DMV just like you get the wrong order at mcdonalds. It’s the same world with the same people, it’s not like public servants are from another planet. And as far as efficiency, the administrative cost of the food stamp program is 3% of the budget. Beat that in the private sector. Show me a bank with that kind of overhead.
“My answer is pretty
obvious, so let me try arguing the opposite way…Businesses exist
because of the government… hm. Okay, I’ve got it. The businesses that
made America’s economy something awesome to behold exist because of our
government, founded on freedoms. We can see by looking at other parts of
the world that our type of government, based on rights of the
individual and limited federal power, is the form most conducive to
thriving businesses and economic growth. With a different, more
restrictive form of government, these businesses might very well not
exist.”
Such as what? Businesses without restrictions are called monopolies. Banks without restrictions are called loan sharks.
“That’s not what Obama was saying. But you know what? If a
businessman needed a road, he would damn well build one himself. That
has actually happened, and does happen, so I don’t really get what their
point is when they yammer on about the roads.”
Yes, a pizza place can afford to build roads to everybody’s house they deliver to.
How about this, for all of the folks out there who like to say “I built this by myself” Go ahead and lay off every single employee you have….. and watch and see how long your business lasts, and how much money you make.
Go ahead, don’t pay someone to create sale papers, or distribute them, do it ALL BY YOURSELF. Don’t hire anyone to build your products, DO IT ALL BY YOURSELF. Don’t hire, trucks or trains or anything else to ship your products DELIVER it ALL BY YOURSELF. Don’t hire anyone to put your product together in any fashion, do it ALL BY YOUR SELF.
Then look aound and see how much money you make. See how muchyou sell, and DON’T COMPLAIN when your business goes BANKRUPT , ALL BY ITSELF.
Of course if you are the only Employee of your company, and do all the things required to be successful, with NO HELP of ANY KIND from ANYONE…….. you can say I did it all, but I just don’t have enough business to live on.
@GodlessLiberal - Actually, I would prefer that freedom and accountability.
Obama:
“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.”
Obama is off. The Internet was invented by an Englishman and it was not used by the military for the ultimate purpose of making money:
“The actual invention of the internet was by an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee. http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/lee.html He devised the html stuff and the idea of networking documents without having to use the same base system on all the computers. He worked at CERN. The contribution of the US military was that they had a large number of computers that could be linked this way. Of course, what they didn’t want was that this new tool should become available to everyone. If the invention of html had been in the USA, they might have slapped restrictions on it. As it was, a Brit working in Switzerland was right out of their territory and he wanted the thing to stay freely available. He deserves more recognition for his achievements.”
Whenever Obama’s lips move, nothing good is coming out, either misinformation, disinformation or outright lies.
The Internet I believe was used only in the education, and then expanded from there. I can’t be certain. In any case, I just wanted to wish you, JustFineThankU a most Happy Halloween ! [Card]
My son built his own business. He sold it JUST before the election and he now works with the company that bought it. (Smart move, at least for now). I say as it ends up, his timing was perfect. We are gonna take a big hit here soon. I felt sick all day yesterday just knowing that we have four more years of torture: Obamination. In 8 years with that guy, our country is irretrievably changed. Sucks.