What if government owed its success to business people?

In the five years I have contributed to this blog, I have written about politics less than five times. The reason for that is, as important as citizen action is, personal action trumps it all. As important as a political world-view is, a proper spiritual orientation is primary, and informs all other aspects of your work in the world.

But I want to comment on a recent statement by President Obama, because I believe it to be so wrong-headed it must be addressed. On July 15, he said the following:

"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."

While most of the media have sought to downplay the comment, saying he was referring to "roads and bridges" and "infrastructure," it still seems pretty clear the President meant that successful people are successful because of the largess, beneficence and help of government. But if the media are right in their interpretation, it seems they, and the President, are wrong in their facts.

What if it is actually the other way around? What if government owes its success to business? Using the President's own examples, consider the following:

• ROADS: When Henry Ford started his first assembly line in 1913, there were no wide, smooth roads waiting for cars to travel on them. Most roads in America were nothing more than rutted wagon trails, which wreaked havoc on the Model T. The flood of inexpensive cars created the demand for better roads.

• BRIDGES: There were bridges in Roman times, but bridge-building in America was driven by private enterprise, first the railroads, then the automobile. There was no Brooklyn Bridge before the train. There was no Golden Gate Bridge before the automobile. Modern bridges owe their success to the steel industry, which made strong, long spans possible, as well as the locomotives and the cars and trucks themselves.

• POWER: Thomas Edison, an inventor, came up with the process of electrical generation and distribution. That made manufacturing on a large scale practical. John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil led the way in fueling America's movement, as well as the boilers that heated our buildings, and now the natural gas that powers it all. 

• INTERNET: Yes, the Internet began as a defense project (never envisioned as a profit-making enterprise, as the President claims—private business did that), but it would have been an abject failure had not Alexander Graham Bell paved the way with his vision for communication by wire, and if IBM and others had not furnished machines to harness it.

• EDUCATION: Andrew Carnegie, who made his fortune in steel, built 1,795 public or academic libraries, and helped others with 1,419 grants. Harvard University, the nation's oldest institute of higher learning, and where the President attended Law School, was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard, a clergyman. John D. Rockefeller, the "infamous" oil baron of Standard Oil, founded The University of Chicago, where the President was a Senior Lecturer. Even The Punahou School in Hawaii, where the President attended before college, was founded by Christian missionaries. While the President speaks often of the value of public education, he himself is the legacy of the hard work of successful men and women who did not depend on the government.

So, would it not be more accurate to say that America—the government and the nation—owes its success to business men and women, and not the other way around? A case can be made that all of those listed above, as well as others, like Bill Gates, built the machines and made the tools that made the much-touted "infrastructure" possible.

And let us not forget some other great businessmen. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson weren't in the colonies to make a government. There were here to farm and to practice law. But when the demands of the King became too onerous, they and others took time from their lucrative trades to win a revolution and give us some real "infrastructure"—the Constitution of the United States. 


—Wayne S.