Naiveté is the attitude that the government is bad or can't do things
right. It's neither all bad nor all good--depends on the people involved
in that government, the strengths of checks and balances, and open
media/press to report on it. Of course I remember fruitcake JEdgar
Hoover's spying, and CIA's LSD experiments, and open air testing of
atomic bombs in St. George, Utah. I also remember General Westmoreland
lying about Viet Nam.
However, the government also funded medical research to wipe out polio,
and to develop and distribute influenza vaccine to people who need it.
Government money also sent astronauts to the moon and the space lab, and
sent two robots to Mars on a 90-day exploratory geological mission in
2003 that is still ongoing nearly 5 years later.
The public-private partnerships that created satellite communications
were necessary advancements that couldn't have been done at the time [or
now] by private corporations. Same for Arpanet and the Internet. Same
for the monopolies that exist in cable and telco broadband that allow
them to set rates based on whatever they can get away with instead of
letting the market determine rates with competition, or providing
quality broadband service [and choice] without gouging the customers, as
it is today. Of course businesses exist to provide products and services
at a profit, but without competition and subisidies, most tend to take
advantage of that position at the expense of the customers.
Betty
Good to see that you admit you were sleeping in class while the
government was doing good things for the public, instead of spying on
us.
The level of is rarely seen in nature, since as you approach such a
fact-free vacuum, subjects usually implode.
We must have both slept through different history classes. Where you awake
when the instructor went over J. Edger Hoover spying on Martin Luther King
and thousands of others he suspected of being unpatriotic? Congress holding
hearings and smearing the reputation of anyone suspected of having communist
leanings, whether it were true or not? The CIA experimenting with LSD on
soldiers without their knowledge or consent? The Tuskegee syphilis
experiment, where govt. scientists allowed black men unknowingly infected
with the disease go untreated to see how the disease progressed? Conducting
open-air biological experiments over populated areas and within public
facilities? A president lying about ships being attacked in SE Asian gulfs,
the US Military dumping thousands of gallons of Agent Orange in Viet Nam
knowing the health effects, etc, etc.
No thanks. I don't need your brand of good things.
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