“A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: ‘If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.’ He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: ‘The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet,'” L. Gordon Crovitz writes for The Wall Street Journal. “It’s an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.”
“The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn’t build the Internet,” Crovitz writes. “Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: ‘The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks.'”
“If the government didn’t invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet’s backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks,” Crovitz writes. “But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks.”
“So having created the Internet, why didn’t Xerox become the biggest company in the world? The answer explains the disconnect between a government-led view of business and how innovation actually happens,” Crovitz writes. “Executives at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., were focused on selling copiers. From their standpoint, the Ethernet was important only so that people in an office could link computers to share a copier. Then, in 1979, Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement whereby Xerox’s venture-capital division invested $1 million in Apple, with the requirement that Jobs get a full briefing on all the Xerox PARC innovations. ‘They just had no idea what they had,’ Jobs later said, after launching hugely profitable Apple computers using concepts developed by Xerox.”
Crovitz writes, “As for the government’s role, the Internet was fully privatized in 1995, when a remaining piece of the network run by the National Science Foundation was closed — just as the commercial Web began to boom. Blogger Brian Carnell wrote in 1999: ‘The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished… In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Related article:
Mitt Romney: Does President Obama think Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple? – July 18, 2012
Al Gore created the Internet and he was with the government…….
Who gets the credit, the guy who pays the bills or the lab rat who comes up with the first prototype, or the mega-corporation that floods the mass market with the product?
By any reasonable definition, it takes teamwork to get anything substantial done. Arguing semantics is a waste of your time and mine.
Did you read a different story than the rest of us then Mike?
terrible article – Xerox did not create “the internet”
ethernet is not the internet
ethernet was just one of numerous ways to interconnect computers and networks
DARPA was the first use of communications similar to what became the internet and WWW came from berners-lee and europe just like Linus Torvalds came from Europe and put his spin on a PC version of Unix
Unix created the internet
Telephone companies with their lines strung all over the world created the internet
HTTP protocol and DNS created the internet
service providers and telco companies created the internet
Beware of political writers pretending to know some actual facts. Ethernet is a data communication standard, IEEE 802.3 to be precise. Xerox may well have been part of the committee that developed the standard, but they hardly own it.
Crovitz and the WSJ are part of News Corp now and are just contributors to the “Obama gets everything wrong” chorus. The corrupting influence of money corrodes everything and the WSJ is no exception. You don’t have to be on TV to jump the shark.
Don’t you know that the Internet is the same as Ethernet, LOL. The author of this article is a moron. Probably a Republican too.
Obama is wrong about something. Par for the course. I used a golf metaphor, in case the president is at the turn and happens to stumble upon this on his blackberry antique.
We fix the Mistake of ’08 on November 6th.
The mistake of ’08? We didn’t elect McCain, silly.
It sure doesn’t look like it right now.
Vote Republican and you vote for corporate takeover of the nation. George W Bush plunged the world into the worst depression since 1929, turned a $5.5 trillion surpluss into a $15.5 trillion deficit Obama has spent less than any president since Eisenhower. Remember corporations care about executive bonuses, not about you.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Obama has had the largest budgets ever. And Obama has had the largest deficits (by far) ever. It was the burst of the housing bubble (led by Democrats like Barney Frank) that caused this problem.
Bush’s last annual budget deficit was 1.3 trillion. How much is 1.3 trillion times 3.5 years? It = 4.5 trillion. That is almost exactly how much the deficit has risen since Obama has been president. So what was Obama supposed to cut out of Bush’s last budget? Paying for the wars? Medicare Plan D? So actually Obama has not spent more than Bush. And he had the additional problem of falling tax revenue and failing economy to deal with. And the freezing of the credit markets {the real cause of the crash} was not the fault of the Democrats it was due to much leverage by the banks and investment firms combined with the deliberate false AAA rating of securitized debt. All occurring while Republicans had control.
The Bush handlers fidn’t put the PNAC wars in the budget among other accounting tricks.
You’ve taken the budget out of context. He has continued spending as the budget has been set by many years previously. He *barely* increased spending in ’09, spending went slightly down in ’10, and ’11 it was back to approx. that of ’09. In other words, the spending under Obama (which does not include ’09 as that is still W. Bush’s budget), is pretty much on par. To blame Obama for decades of poorly managed money is a false assumption. Saying that Obama has the ‘largest deficits by far’ is stating the obvious. Ever year shows increased deficits. And to simply say it is Obama’s fault is to ignore SO many variable.
Hey George!
Where’s George?
Why has this icon of everything right about the Republican party gone underground?
He’s not even invited (says he didn’t want to be a distraction?) to the Republican Presidential Convention.
Is there something you know that a whole lot of Republicans and most, if not all, Democrats already know? That George W Bush was a failure as a president. Unless you were a Corporation that is.
So are you a corporation? I heard that they are people now. I guess they’ve discovered their voice.
And your go-to-guy Obama wants what?
Dude – corporations are board-elected, shareholder-owned. vote them out when we feel like it.
Your guy…wants to rule THE WORLD…no oversight, take away property rights. IDIOT.
I own stock and vote in many corps. They care, I win. Government rules, we all lose. LEARN and grow up
Mr. Rick,
Most corporations only care about themselves.
Why don’t you go ASK those corporations to clean up the air and water pollution. Oh, and increase the gas mileage in all the vehicles while you are at it.
Learn to put people before the god of money. 😉
I think you are missing the point, for the most part PEOPLE own the corporations (that’s what publicly held means) Privately held corporations are extremely rare.
SO, it is a large group of people who own shares (i.e. invest their hard earned money) in a company. These are the people who get to decide what the corp does. The public shareholders (owners) hold the ultimate power in a corporation, not the board nor the CEO.
@ Tessellator: wrong. privately held S-corps outnumber publicly traded corps by an order of magnitude. and if you think your shareholder vote is worth the paper it’s printed on, you’re dreaming. Publicly-traded corporations are designed for three things:
1) minimize personal accountability and liability of owner AND manager
2) attract investment from disinterested & easily-manipulated shareholders
3) maximize personal wealth of board and professional managers (executives)
All else, including shareholder rights, are subservient to these goals of a publicly traded corporation.
Mike are you really that obtuse or are you just playing dumb to attempt to prove a point?
S-corp are personally held companies (small businesses) they are not faceless entities, they are bob’s auto repair down the street. That kind of corporation is a person, because an s-corp by definition is a personal corp (all profits are assumed (and taxed) personally)
All large corporations are c-corps (because of the laws limiting S-corps) privately held c-corps (i.e. above small business) exist but they are exceedingly rare.
George is right, you’re something of an idiot and I rarely take the time to communicate with idiots since there is usually no point. But for the benefit of other readers lets look at the discussion in real life, not defenders of the failure.
Your numbers are flat wrong. They cannot be substantiated except to give credibility to political hacks. Bush hasn’t been the President for over 3 years now and the deficit has ballooned. You want to say that was Bush’s fault? Are you suggesting that the tax cuts which shortened the Clinton recession somehow created this one? Do some research.
Both parties have utterly failed us, but the Dems have completely sold out to socialism through Unions and other special interests. Conservatives still hold sway with the Republicans. In 2010 the tea party began cleaning (the) house. Long time Republicans in congress began losing to a more principled brand of politician. The party elites hate the tea party and for good reason. Dems have reason to truly fear since they took the largest trouncing, i think ever. Remember to define the tea party correctly. Nothing more than fiscally conservative with a desire for a smaller and more functional government.
The recession of 29 was made a depression by implementing Keynesian policies. Because so much capital was removed from the private sector the normal recovery couldn’t happen. Thats why it lasted so long. Funny how our recovery is near non-existent right after the govt spent nearly a Trillion on ‘stimulus’.
Corporations are people. The execs are people. They operate under the same self interest principle that motivates everyone else. We decide what matters to us and we act in ways that bring us closer to it. For some it’s money, for others it’s knowledge, and others still it’s power. Look at the massive power grab embodied in Obamacare. There is far less about health care in that legislation than granting power to bureaucrats. That legislation is far less in the interest of the people than corporate enterprise. At least corporations can’t empower police to take your stuff, well not without politicians’ help.
Obama is a socialist. Like all powerful socialists he is motivated by power. Hate the rich, take their wealth. But who takes it? Do the masses rush the banks and divide the loot? NO. The government aka the “people” take it and divide it amongst the social programs. So who really gets the money? Unions. Politically connected businesses like Solindra and public works contractors. Politicians.
So take another sip of kool-aid. Those who appreciate freedom, the freedom to succeed or fail, understand its value and are voting it back in. You are far too emotionally vested in your opinions to look at the truth.
Wow. Extremely well written. 10
Verbose nonsense remains nonsense, no matter how lengthy.
I have to disagree. The republicans have been holding up the critical money needed to rebuild the infrastructure because they are focused on getting President Obama out, not fixing the country. They have said it several times. And yes companies are people, the execs of ENRON, Bernie Maloff, and others that are stealing billions, all in the name of personal self interest.
I disagree. Companies will not be people until we execute one for killing real people.
I’m sorry this wasn’t written for a 4th grade level.
Corporations are legal entities which are owned and operated by real people. The legal entity is legally treated as a person for lack of a better definition because it doesn’t exist without people in control of it.
I have never heard of the legal paperwork killing a court clerk by papercut so why worry about executing one?
Now what is your understanding of government? is that a disembodied entity in your understanding also or do you understand that it is run by people? People capable of the same self interest motivations as corporate execs.
Crawl out of your shell. There is a whole world of knowledge available to you if you just look.
So, the tobacco industry did not willfully engage in actions that caused the death of real people? The auto industry did not decide it was less costly to allow people to die in cars with faulty fuel tanks than fix them? Corporations make decisions every day that it is better to kill people than impact their profits. If a real person made those conscious decisions to kill other real persons they would face the death penalty. Therefore, logic tells me corporations are not people, legal fantasy aside.
Government in America may have been “of the people, by the people and for the people” at one time. Seems now that it is “of the dollar, by the dollar and for the dollar”, thanks to the legislation from the bench of the Supreme Court. I doubt that genie is ever going back in the bottle.
I’m going to share a hint with you, you’re not as smart as you would like to believe, certainly not constrained by a factual view of the world. Your snotty attitude wears very thin, very quickly. But, since you think you are communicating with idiots, feel free to resume your usual aloofness.
You are special. (just a touch of condescension because it’s you)
I don’t think I’m exceptionally brilliant, I just don’t think this is very complicated.
Your logic is so poor I don’t have room to help you here. Besides, it has nothing to do with how socialist Obama is. I expect you want all corporations to go away and the “people” own all means of production. Because that works so well in communist China, Cuba, Venezuela. Even overthrowing the terrible government of South Africa by communists led to far greater poverty.
Don’t recall anything about the government owning the means of production in my post. I just object to corporations being allowed to masquerade as persons while not adhering to similar rules. I did notice an absence of response to two concrete examples of corporate bad behavior going unpunished. I’m guessing you’re getting paid by the number of times you use “Obama” and “socialist” in the same sentence. Good luck in your career.
Actually we have been pouring money into infrastructure as a part of the “stimulus package” Spending money like a drunken solder. This for the most part has not been spent wisely. Rather, it was spent on projects that were “ready to spend now” rather than the projects that desperately needed to be done (worst condition) or that would have benefited the most people. Neither was accomplished and yet a huge sum of money was expended on “infrastructure”
I think we needed to stop that madness (as did my longtime friend who is a high level manager in a state DOT) as our infrastructure is crumbling and the waste was unforgivable. The stimulus was just pouring water onto the ground, in an attempt to make it rain.
Go back to school and take an economics class. Learn how the system works. Your arguments are based on myths regarding how classes operate. Class warfare is a method invoked by a handful of powerful and ruthless men who would pit class against class so that they may sit back and collect the profits in their coffers.
So, look this up at the GAO or other CREDIBLE keeper of stats.
Corporate taxes and personal income taxes for what we define as truly wealthy people, are the LOWEST they have ever been. They are not enough to pay for the disproportionate benefit that these breaks give to these people.
You say corporations are people. That is true in the sense that the Supreme Court argued long ago that the corporation is a person in its dealings with accountability in a court of law. If a lawsuit is presented, a corporation can be treated as one person in regards to litigation (either plaintiff or defendant).
recently, the Supreme Court, which has swung ideologically to the right has extended that to political contributions without the need to fully disclose who the people (your word) are behind those contributions.
You (regardless of your political leanings) are an intellectual midget.
As far as Obama goes, he is a Centrist Democrat. Some believe that his failure in policy is capitulating to the interests of many people whie serving the needs of none. A socialist indeed!
He’s as much a socialist as you are an intellectual.
You’re not even good at flame baiting.
I don’t consider myself an intellectual but the A in my MBA Econ class says i do know something on this subject.
I say corporations are made of people just like government is. it’s not a legal point i’m making, it’s an observation of the obvious. Power corrupts and that is true in private and public sectors. When execs like those at Enron begin to feel all powerful they think they can flaunt the law, and common decency, and even bend the laws of economics to gain more wealth and power. You confuse my defense of the free market with defense of bad behavior by those in it. I don’t advocate a completely unregulated business environment nor does anyone I know. Just like anti-trust protects us from monopolistic businesses the separation of power protects us from tyranny. Now ask yourself which has more power to destroy, the corrupt CEO consolidation power or the corrupt politician? One ends up in jail (Madoff, Lay) but the other just exempts them self from the law. Remember the Capital Post Office Scandal? Government has consolidated too much power through Obamacare and regulatory agencies in the name of protecting people. Just like the overprotective parent that never lets a child learn about life, the overprotective government oppresses it’s people.
I’m not defending Republicans, they can be just as corrupt. But if Obama is centrist then the democrat party is now the communist party.
Class warfare is the number one tactic of the Obama campaign. “fair share” “fat cats” “wall street” are all tossed around by the President in a context to evoke anger at the wealthy. Anyone who wants lower taxes is called “greedy” and “unpatriotic”. I’m not wealthy and don’t even make enough to worry about federal income taxes. I do want more opportunity and history says that the opportunity I want for me and my kids is created in a business friendly environment.
The US corporate tax rate is the highest in the world.
“Japan lowered its corporate tax rate, leaving the United States with the highest effective rate among developed countries: 39.2 percent.” – USNews.com
You might want to go back to the GAO…
The vast majority of corporations are very small companies. These small companies are barely making it and these rates make it near impossible for them to compete. Only massive companies that can operate on economies of scale can survive rates like you talk about. Often by moving significant portions of the company overseas, like GE moved a bunch to China. The effect of high corporate tax rates is to stifle competition from smaller companies and ensure the huge companies retain enough market share to insulate them from the affects of predatorial business practices.
The law of unintended consequences. Unless you are like GE that can pay under 3% because Immelt has political connections… with Democrats. And they still moved jobs to China.
I don’t think my intellectual height should be at issue here. It’s your inability to reason and understand the facts that are in front of you. I don’t care to bait flame, I do hope some will try to think for themselves. Your criticisms are not substantiated except by your own assertions, that means you rely on what you think you know instead of critical thinking and research
Thanks for the criticism..
ohandy1: Yours is one of the best opinions I have read on this controversial war between Democrats and Republicans. I do agree with most of what you write, but I think that, in these times, the balance is tilted toward the corporate dominance. My opinion is that a bit more government regulation should help reduce the abuse of those companies (and unscrupulous characters on the private sector). I think the balance needs to be adjusted very finely from time to time between corrupt politicians and corrupt CEOs
Joel, Thanks for the kind words but remember the law of unintended consequences usually works best through bureaucracy. I’d focus on the politicians.
You want to make a statement to Washington: vote out all encumbants in Congress. They have all failed us, both parties! Neither party has a good solution and they are all just looking out for themselves. Vote them all out and send a message that we want our representatives to represent us, not to vote along party lines. Vote for whomever you want, but just not for the encumbants.
There were no weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq but apparently being wrong about the history of the internet is more important to Republican critics of Obama.
People are still talking about that? Saddam Hussein was the biggest WMD, bested only by his historical counterparts.
Really? It’s a good thing we aren’t Germany, or I bet you’d find a way to justify the Holocaust…
What does his Blackberry have to do with anything? Red herring.
We fix the Mistake of ’08 on November 6th.
…By reinstituting the Mistake of ’00. Aren’t we brilliant.
We’re all fracked ladies and gentlemen. Shot by both sides.
Enter the third parties…
The ‘O’ in charge created the largest explosion of gummint shirkers in history. He never earned any wages by doing a real job.
And if you’re talking about unemployment, it’s gone down under Obama while exploding under Bush. And Romney wants to go back to doing what Bush did, which is what got us into this mess in the first place.
What are you talking about? In your world, black is white and white is black. Unemployment has gone *UP* under Obama. Debt has gone way *UP*. Obama is spending our way into hell.
Actually government spending is down under Obama. W spent way more in each of his two terms.
Cut taxes and then cut government spending such as Defense, then watch the unemployment rolls swell as all those who depend on Defense dollars are laid off.
The way out of a recession or depression is to enable consumers to spend more, not to give tax breaks to the 1% whose spending is a rounding error.
http://wp.me/pRB43-2Iw
http://tinyurl.com/c6b2acy
Quote what you want, but IRL the world is happening around us and I happen to live in an area with a bunch of 1%ers And can tell you that they contribute to the economy much more than any govt program or tax.
Here, let me hold onto the reigns of your high horse while you dismount it. These things are dangerous you know, not meant to be used by the ill informed.
You sure are into “reigns” aren’t you? As in the “reign of terror” caused by your 1 per centers.
Oh, that’s right, you meant “rein” as in what’s used with horses. My bad. I was under the false assumption that the 1% could actually write something intelligent.
When it rains, it pours.
Well considering that we lost about 4 million jobs in Obamas first 5 months you certainly can’t blame him for those.
Would somebody *please* quote statistics from reputable sources?
MY DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DAD!
NO MY DAD CAN BEAT UP YOUR DAD!
I think you would be astounded at Rmoneys plan if he is elected President. There is a reason he destroyed all the records from his tenure as Governor and his Olympic work. There are reasons he isn’t releasing his tax returns and there are reasons his money is hidden offshore. Pray we never have to endure the extent of his scheming.
Obama will never understand the entrepreneur. I started and ran my own business. I cashed in my life’s savings. I risked everything. And those roads and teachers and carpenters that Obama claims that helped build my business…?
Well, I paid for all that. I paid higher taxes to fund that infrastructure. I do appreciate these people but they were PAID. They didn’t take the risk or invest their money.
^ Ditto! I have almost gone under investing my time, talent and money – tried every which way to get the govt interested – to no avail. Struggled for a long time but finally, with my own PRIVATE funding, we are a very successful business. No thanks to the Govt.
With all due respect, you didn’t personally pay for all the roads, airports, military, sewer systems, education of the population, maintainence of the currency, etc. we all did. If you were parachuted into the middle of the Sahara your business would not have taken off no matter how hard you worked. No one wants to diminish the hard work and intelligence you put into your business. But recognize that it has flourished in the ecosystem provided by all of us working collectively, which is our government. Our government is us.
Craig T. Nelson:
“I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”
Having the article start with the out of context quote invalidates the article. This is why conservatives and Creationists are synonymous terms: niether met an out of context quite they didn’t like.
“met an out of context qoute they didn’t like.” Sounds more like an Obama TV commercial on Romney!
It wasn’t out of context. Obama said exactly want he meant. That business owners didn’t create their businesses, that they had help. Yeah, well so what? That help was PAID for! It wasn’t donated. So what else could Obama’s point been about?
His point is that we’re all in this together, and even the ultra-rich have someone to thank for being where they are. It’s the American value of altruism and paying back to your fellow man for all the sacrifices that have been made by teachers, police, firemen, soldiers, etc to get us to where we are.
Stop acting like indignant children and understand that he was trying to appeal to our better nature. God, Republicans just want nothing but a fight.
Spare us the wisdom and common sense. We just want to claw each other’s eyes out for fun after a long hard day working at the factory for an asshole, or bemoaning the state of the world in our unwelcome retirement from a similarly unrewarding job.
Republicans and conservatives, libertarians realize Obama was saying business owes government for infrastructure. That’s the problem. Business and coporations are people, paying taxes to a government by the people to organize such functions. The problem is that with Obama’s silly statement, he once again is demonizing business.. Why pick that fight? Because Obama feels government is always the solution. That is where he is wrong and an amazing number of liberals and Dems on this blog siding with government as the solution. Ideally maybe In a few cases. Like defense. Otherwise, always inefficient, Uninspired and mixed with politics corrupt. You libs should be ashamed of giving the government the freedom and liberty guarenteed by the cinstitution and fought so
hard for by the founding fathers. Don’t you feel Obama taking your liberty away. You lemmings.. Defending such corrupt broke government. Obama is a socialist at very least. He is trampling the American spirit and enabling a nation of takers. He is the great divider. So it’s the makers vs the takers. Sadly there are so many takers. And the nation is broke. I’m preparing for the collapse Obama is setting up. Last this is a perfect forum for this talk. Apple is totally about innovation, competition and profit. Success. Avoid taxes all you can Apple. That’s another thing. Don’t you libtards realize that even taxes are passed on to the consumer. And for what. So government can squander the cash? Don’t you realize what inefficiency is? Obama never ran so much as a lemonade stand. And libs waste their vote on him hoping for a hand out. You should be ashamed.
We’re all in this together – just like in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the former Soviet Union and Eastern European Block; they’re all, and were, in it “together” in hunger and despair, and no rights to speak of. You listen to Chavez and Ortega speeches – they’re the same as Obama. Big governments that take away from the rich and give to the poor. It works great every single time, doesn’t it.
Here in Cuba we also have roads, bridges, police, a military, factories and lots of people, but we have no prosperity, innovation, rich movie stars or moguls; just poor people. Our streets are home to old cars and pedestrians. And dirt. BUT, our misfortune has nothing to so with the fact that there is no private property here, or that one has no right to the fruits of their hard labor. Our collectivist government is the best in the world. The only fair system. Capitalism is cruel somehow. Our people are very happy in their poverty and destitution. Just ask them. And Michael Moore swears we have the best health care system. It’s the evil gringo that keeps us in poverty. All we need is a Stimulus. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll call Joe Biden; he’s VERY GENEROUS, gives huge amounts to charity every year. Real humanitarian, he is. Takes the train, you know!
brilliantly put.
Actually it was “roads and bridges” to which he was referring.
He also said:
“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.”
If you buy that then I have another bridge to sell you…
I would have thought you would keep politics out of this news aggregator And even more important at least tell truths and not the lies. President Obama did not say anyone did not build there business. He was clearly referring to people no matter who it was having help. Either teachers, or someone who gave them inspiration, the roads they used to get products to market. He was basically saying the exact same thing that Romnney said to Olympians back when he was in charge of the Olympics. Almost word for word. Once again the right has seized upon something they can stretch and twist and pull only to be found out as another fake attack
exactly – well said
Out of context? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of his speech there, unlike when Dems use the “I like to fire people” snippet from Romney when he was talking about people he hired to provide services who did a lousy job. It wasn’t about firing workers, but the Dems jumped on it like it was. So let’s not act so indignant.
He basically said society created the conditions and the structure that allowed you to succeed in business and therefore you owe something back to society. And he is 100% correct.
Wait… My taxes that I already pay aren’t enough?
Well we are running huge deficits aren’t we? It can’t be done by cuts alone. Thats what happens when you have wars that cost a fortune. Lowering taxes and firing teachers, cops and fireman to pay for it certainly isn’t a solution.
Well, so what?! Let’s say that was his point. So what? What’s he driving at? Those teachers or road builders were paid, were they not? They didn’t risk, donate or invest anything. So, is he saying that they should have gotten something more in addition to their salaries?
Why not, i’ll jump in.
I could call you a crazed kool-aid drinker but for the sake of those who really don’t know lets take this a little more slowly.
I heard the speech. the quote everyone is claiming is out of context was very much in context. It was in context within that speech, in context with his writings, in context with his mentors and those who raised him. He said very clearly that no business owner built what they have. The credit is given, in the speech, wholly to the infrastructure and the American systems.
The car was built before there were roads. Electrical devices were designed before there was a grid. Hell, the grid wasn’t even developed by the government except to say that the government is PEOPLE.
Obama is espousing socialism. Our constitution is antithetical to socialism and if that’s what you want go to Europe and pick your failing state.
If you pay attention to the words of Obama in his own books and pay attention to those who he surrounds himself with you can’t deny his VERY socialist leanings. The case could be made for communist leanings given the number of communists he associates with.
So focus on the semantics if you like. The meaning was clear and consistent with everything else he has been doing.
Why not, I’ll jump in.
(1) We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…promote the general Welfare…do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (This is the socialist part of the Preamble, which I assume you would like to strike).
(2) I heard the speech. The quote everyone is claiming is out of context was very much OUT of context as it was edited in the ad.
(3) Just days ago the GOP was accusing the President of being a “Crony Capitalist.” Which is it Socialist or Crony Capitalist? We await your deliverance of the varnished truth. It takes a crazed kool-aid drinker to imply others are one.
Why was this article posted on MDN–to attract hits like Paul Thurrott and others do making crazy Apple pronouncements?
The preamble isn’t suggesting socialism, it suggests that the general welfare of the citizens of the US will be better off under the laws of the constitution, which was written to tell government could NOT do. The responsibility of govt is to provide a stable environment for business where individual rights including property rights, are protected from collectivists.
The speech was what it was. The president believes in social justice interpreted as taking from the wealthy and giving to the poor. Look at his speech in context with his campaign’s attacks on the wealthy, in context with his book where he speaks of associating with communists and radicals, in context of his policies like Obamacare that gives massive regulatory power to unelected bureaucrats, in context with his policy on oil where he ended drilling in our gulf but offers $2billion to Brazil for drilling off shore. Make your excuses but Obama has a history. there is a record. Name one thing he’s done that has been good for business.
Crony capitalism is a byproduct of socialism. Socialists can only impose their policies by taking other peoples money. That causes a lack of support so they find friends in the business world that they offer to shield from their policies in order to gain their financial support. Can you say GE? How about the Unions getting exempted from Obamacare? How about laws forcing non union members to pay unions even if they don’t want to?
i don’t care why the article was posted. it’s not my site and they can post whatever they want. If you don’t like the comments move on to another article, this one got 10 times the interaction and that means the site is probably gaining audience. they will earn more money from advertisers and the audience has has opportunity to face a very important issue facing the country.
This happens every time macdaily writes about Rush slobbering over his new apple ________. Tons of idiotic posts from ideaological folks. I love the Mac news and really hate the link bait crap. The idiotors know better but a pageview is a pageview.
This quote is a summarized snippet from a thoughtful speech. If macdaily was serious they’d include the entire speech and let each user decide what it meant to them. Alas, the way it’s written is bullshit. Macdaily, honest thoughtful peeps don’t like bullshit. Get a clue.
And for the dipshits, Steve Jobs was a capitalist and a liberal.
I’ll sell you the same bridge I as old the other guy if you want. Thoughtful speech, my old moto CPU…
Look, I don’t agree with much of what our current President says or does, but at the very least, let’s quote him correctly and in context. The snippet that has everyone wound up is easy to use and manipulate to level an attack against Obama. But the reality is that his speech involved a great deal more and this has been blown out of proportion and out of context. MDN should avoid playing into these political games – already these posts and comments are plagued by non-sensical partisan BS from both sides. Let’s try to keep it about technology and Mac/Apple related technology especially – lest the trolls come out in force again.
I understand your position but the passion in this subject is particularly high because the stakes are high. I have three kids who may find themselves in a socialist nation that wipes its collective ass with the constitution. That matters because without capitalism there will be very little reason to pursue the technological advances that stimulate this site.
Oh, come on. Nobody is going to make this into a socialist nation. Ain’t gonna happen. Obama is no more a socialist than Romney is, the policies he’s gotten passed were ALL initially proposed by republicans.
Fact is NO President has that power. Even Congress would have trouble with it. The political blowback would be impossible to resist. Hell, even most Democrats are backed by rich Capitalists. How the hell do you think they got rich?
Stop with the “socialist” crap. That’s nothing but a right wing scare tactic designed to get you guys excited, you folks wouldn’t know a REAL socialist if one bit you in the ass.
The real left wingers in Europe are shaking their heads in wonder at such irrational fear.
I was in West Germany before the Wall fell. I worked along side people from behind the iron curtain with the scars of their dissent. If you don’t think it can happen here you are a fool and ignorant of history.
Obamacare alone completely alters the balance of power between the people and bureaucrats. Anything that impacts the health of Americans can be regulated under this act. How hard is it to name things that DONT impact health? Socialism is, among other things, controlling the economy through regulations. Under this administration regulators have been made vastly more powerful.
Europe is collapsing. The riots have started and the only way they continue is by printing more money. Now the Fed talks of QE3.
It can happen. If people don’t wake up to that fact it will happened.
You’re right! Unregulated banking practices have NOTHING to do with Europe’s problems.
Well, Okay, but that’s like saying private enterprise built electricity. Surely they did that, but without some serious government intervention (for both good and bad) electricity would have been created, sent to and used by a very small number of people for a long time. Obama is overstating things, but the government certainly played a role in creating and nurturing the internet–and that includes letting things languish for a long time. Hell, I remember sending emails to my father in 1984, when an internet was most definitely working. I’d go to a dumb terminal room, type in a command prompt, send it from my college to his university, where he taught. I even got to see how the packets were transported from university (or military base) to another. Was pretty cool, and definitely predates when most people think a real, usable internet existed!
What planet are you from? There was huge government investment in the Internet. Also, in aerospace, our highway system, railroads, and electrical grid.
These anti government people are using very selective memory.
Again the government doesn’t have any money to invest. They have to take it from those that made money via TAXES. It’s not anti government. It’s moronic government! As in, a politician saying that roads and bridges weren’t built by you, while true, but they were paid by me and you and everyone else that puts money into the kitty, which now a day is half the nation. However, the idiot in the White House missed out on something very important. Having a road or bridge or police force or schools doesn’t make you and your business a success! Solyndra had a road!
When they collect the tax money, it becomes the government’s money. I don’t know where you went to college, but I’d demand my money back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf
OF COURSE THE GOVERNMENT WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN FUNDING THE INTERNET, WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT FUNDING THE RESEARCH, NO ONE KNOWS WHERE IT WOULD BE… THE RIGHT WING LIES ARE GETTING A LITTLE STUPEFYING!
“In the early days, Cerf was a program manager for the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding various groups to develop TCP/IP technology.”
“During his graduate student years, he studied under Professor Gerald Estrin, worked in Professor Leonard Kleinrock’s data packet networking group that connected the first two nodes of the ARPANet,[14] the predecessor[14] to the Internet, and “contributed to a host-to-host protocol” for the ARPANet.[15] While at UCLA, he also met Robert E. Kahn, who was working on the ARPANet hardware architecture.[15] After receiving his doctorate, Cerf became an assistant professor at Stanford University from 1972–1976, where he conducted research on packet network interconnection protocols and co-designed the DoD TCP/IP protocol suite with Kahn (FOR DARPA!!!!).[15] Cerf then moved to DARPA in 1976, where he stayed until 1982.”
Can you people read 🙂
The story tells only part of the story and is correct only to a certain degree. The government did commission and develop the Internet as a way to interconnect research and government networks, and did so with pre-TCP/IP protocols. They later commissioned design and development of the next generation protocol, which became TCP/IP. It was later commercialized. So, in essence, they did create the Internet.
Yes, hyperlinks are a key piece and commercial opportunity brought us to where we are now, but we can’t dismiss the government’s key role in the early days.
As usual, the Murdoch Street Journal gets it wrong, manages to use it to make a predetermined point and ties it all to the high church of the ‘free market’.
The Internet-
If reference to the internet is the physical network (hardware), yes it was built up from DARPANET and was privatized due to the efforts of a number of people- including a then young member of the Tennessee Congressional Delegation named Al Gore.
If reference to the internet is the language, software and protocols- no the government did not.
BTW- packetized information networks predates anything mentioned in the Murdoch Street Journal.
President Obama’s remarks-
He was trying to make the point that entrepreneurs, partnerships, LLCs and big companies all benefit greatly from the community infrastructure, shared security, educational system and other such things that have come about in whole or part by various public programs. It’s not about denying anyone credit for their work or creativity.
Traditionally, an agent provocateur is an agent employed by the police or other entity to act undercover to entice or provoke another person to commit an illegal act. Now that is creepy enough. But as your name implies, by adding progressive, that is about as creepy as it gets as you assume the police or authorities have your political, clearly leftist, clearly socialist, ok, communist views. You’d be part of the Stasi if you could. Creep. Go release Al Gores inner chakra, creep. Better yet, move to Europe. Thank god for Murdoch.
in1969 the government hooked together 4 computers and sent the first emails
… @$$. First off, he never said he “created” the Internet. And he WAS one of the people INVOLVED in its creation. So was I, me and several thousands of others who played minor – truly minor – roles in the process.
As for the government’s role, the government itself had almost nothing to do with the invention of the Internet. However, it pointed the people who DID in the right direction. No, didn’t suggest HOW and may not even have suggested what they needed. They said “we need to be able to do something like “this”, can you help?” And quite often they paid cash for results. And sometimes things “just appeared” with no instigation. In essence, NOBODY “invented” or “created” the Internet. I “just grew” … like Topsy.
And Hyperlinks, as admittedly important to our current use and enjoyment of the Internet, are NOT integral to the concept or workings of the Internet. The Web? Darn straight. But the Internet? Get. A. CLUE.
No, Mr. Businessman you didn’t create your business all by your hard working dedicated self! You needed an education, roads, telephone, internet, a currency to trade in, regulations to regulate banking and commerce, employees with skills to do the work you need, other companies to make the machines you need in your business, Investors and advisors, accountants, etc,etc,etc, so your individual contribution to your business is rather small in comparison to the Huge investment society as a whole has made into the infrastructure and commercial environment making your business possible!
Where would Apple be if Intel had not given Steve a capital investment the banks would not make? Apple also depends on the infrastructure provided them in the U.S as well as the countries they produce products in .. with out it they would not be here today.
Thanks Obama for pointing this out to all the ego centric people here that believe the world revolves around only their individual efforts! Did you make your Apple computer or is that part of the Infrastructure that allows you to do your business?
Say thank you!!!!
you got it exactly backwards. Go back 300 years in this country and eliminate all the business folks and then run the whole great experiment again. What do you get? Nothing. Nada. North Korea.
Your rant sounds fueled by a gap between what you think you deserve in this world and what ya got.
I think you’d better think again. The government at the time – the British Crown, was involved in granting the rights to even colonize here, and in case you forgot, the Crown taxes were so onerous we had to revolt against them.. Remember? so, we wouldn’t be here if government hadn’t been involved from the first.
Remember, Columbus got his funding from the Spanish Crown. Government again.
The truth is, as Obama has noted, success is a partnership between government and private enterprise. government can’t do it all, neither can private businesses. It takes a COMMUNITY, comprised of both private citizens and government to do it.
Government provides the infrastructure, the overall regulatory rules for behavior and transactions, and the law enforcement and local services such as fire and ambulance.
Once that is in place, private entities take over and do the rest.
Government merely provides the level playing field so everybody has an equal chance of success given their own abilities, capitalization and energy.
Is this so hard? Is this so much of an anathema to you right wingers so that you have to label this socialist? It is simply fact. This is not opinion, but the facts as they exist on the ground, and have been since the beginning of this country.
Get a life and learn something besides all that Fox News crap they feed you.
Business does need the stability of a good government. There are no business advocates here or anywhere that advocate anarchy. You confuse the rejection of Obama’s claim with anarchists.
The anarchists all marched with OWS types. Businesses are aligned with tea party types, for good reason.
The partnership you are describing is crony capitalism where the playing field isn’t level, whoever is most in favor with political power gets an advantage. That was how the Crown worked with the East India Trading Company. That kind of partnership is always bad for the people.
The constitutional role of government is to create an environment where businesses can engage in economic progress. Capitalism 101: move assets to a higher value purpose. Government research is done by people. People operate under the Rational Actor Paradigm. Government researchers often become the execs in new companies built on their research, they become rich and powerful.
Read the whole speech. The premise is that everything is communal property and government has the right to take what you have and give it to others. That’s the socialist definition of community. Now look at the reality of that. Government takes wealth and gives it to whom? Solyndra, Unions (GM, SEIU), friends of the party. That’s who. The Rational Actor Paradigm doesn’t only apply to business execs. it works just as well for power hungry politicians. Put the two in the same room and you get Hugo Chavez. Eventually one turns on the other and you get Cuba.
Yeah, we get the point Obama was making. But so what? We all know that are taxes go to national defense and without a safe country we wouldn’t have a safe place to do business. So, what’s his point? Of course, his point is that he wants MORE TAXES so he can SPEND MORE. All those examples he cited were examples where the business owner had paid for these services. Please, Mr President, get off your high horse.
Interesting article in reply to the Murdoch Street Journal:
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/xerox-internet/
Title:Xerox: Uh, We Didn’t Invent the Internet
LA Times Beat Down of Murdoch Street Journal
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-mo-who-invented-internet-20120723,0,5052169.story
I don’t think anyone should get their panties in a bunch, just because a touch of politics shows up here.
Look at John Gruber – he posts items that are essentially press releases for Obama. By comparison, MDN is a paragon of even-handedness.
Solid point. Notice that Gruber prospers big time—his blog doesn’t accept comments, so the political psychos and platform death squads never develop any traction.
So what does this have to do with Macs or Apple?
10
I’m sure some muppet will tell you why you’re wrong, though. Lol
I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you. ; )
+1
A pity the US government didn’t step in in the early days of mobile to avoid having incompatible networks and multiple standards.
It seems that those living in countries where all carriers compete on the same standard (GSM for example) for customers by offering better service, bigger limits, cheaper plans, etc are winning.
The Republican strategy is basically to take traditional American ideas and try to paint them as socialism.
I too noticed the unusually trenchant headline and wondered about MDN’s critical distance.
First, all Presidents misspeak on occasion but seldom in prepared speeches vetted by experts.
Second, it was the Wall Street Journal. Since when do we worship their reporting?
And third, the story of the Internet’s origin is the stuff of urban legends, claims and counterclaims by dueling historians, and is just as undecided as the assassination conspiracies of Lincoln and Kennedy, credit for the invention of writing, the automobile, or the electric battery.
We need to give some of this crap a rest, even though in an election year zealots spring out of the woodwork and throw everything they’ve got at us—not really in the hope that it might influence the vote, but to bolster their self-confidence with bluster.
Originally posted in reply to warbux’s comment, which MDN deleted—censored.
A lot of censoring going on on this site
Please. I was there, and this article is baloney. (1) Vint didn’t “invent” TCP/IP all by himself, as he’ll be the first to acknowledge. The specifics of the protocol, including the vital end-to-end principle, were largely worked out by Dave Clark and Dave Reed at MIT, who were supported by — ahem — ARPA. (2) Ethernet wasn’t a way to bridge computer networks; it was a way to connect devices on a local area network, and remains the primary way that that is done today. (3) The ARPA and PARC communities were very close in the seventies, and Alan Kay discusses them as a single joint community. The personal computer was conceived by Alan when he was an (ARPA-supported) student of Dave Evans at Utah, and then he moved to PARC where he and others brought that vision to life. (4) As for TCP/IP, it took off not because it was brilliant; there were lots of network stacks around at the time. It took off because there was a great, free implementation on the free, DARPA-paid-for, Berkeley Unix operating system. Berkeley Unix was built by Bill Joy and Sam Leffler at Berkeley, supported by DARPA. It got distributed for free, and was adapted by Sun, HP (HP/UX), DEC (Ultrix), IBM (AIX); gave rise to (DARPA-funded) Mach at CMU, which became NextStep, which we now know as OS/X. As for the web, it grew out of a bunch of previously-existing, academic-developed, DARPA-sponsored services: ftp (developed by a bunch of ARPA-supported researchers in 1972), WAIS (Brewster Kahle, then at Thinking Machines, which was a commercialization of the DARPA Connection Machine project). Berners-Lee unified these services on a plaintext terminal using hyperlinks; it became the web we know when Marc Andreesen at UIUC and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (Department of Energy) added photos and made it Mosaic. And that’s just off the top of my head; I haven’t mentioned Jon Postel, who organized the Domain Name System and really finalized the architecture of the Internet we know today (Jon was at USC/ISI, DARPA-supported); Eric Allman, who invented the email systems we use today (DARPA-supported, UC-Berkeley); RISC architecture (John Hennessy, Stanford; Dave Patterson and Randy Katz, Berkeley; DARPA-supported); RAID storage systems (Randy Katz, again); I could go on. The fact is that industry would never have developed the Internet, because there was no clear business model for the Internet. That came much, much later — long after DARPA had invested many years and much taxpayer money in finalizing the technology.
Even Apple at the time offered A/UX, later abandoned for IBM’s AIX until NeXTSTEP changed the whole deal
Anyone who says that the Internet is a threat to democracy should not be the president of a free country.
Did Obama really say that? You bet he did.
But you dumbasses will vote for him anyway. Many dumbases vote for a big dumbass.
It is truly amazing how people can take the sme information, process it through their own filters, and end up with fundamentally different interpretations.
The false indignation is the best part. He said this…he said that…it offends me. The crap on MDN just keeps getting deeper. And MDN is fostering it, formenting it, and profiting from it.
I will continue browsing some of the articles on MDN until I find a more hospitable location for Mac news. But I won’t bother with the forum comment because the few people that I respect are drowned out by the dross.
No, not you. Fighters gotta fight.
Well, I just might have to weigh in on occasion. Sometimes a post by BLN or F10T12 is just too bizarre to pass up.
That’s the spirit! It’s not really about winning; it’s about the fun.