Tuesday 17 July 2012

You're not so special…

imagePicture from Capitalism

“If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen."

This is what the President of the United States thinks.

Which prompted Don Watkins to recall a passage in Atlas Shruggedin which arch-villain James Taggart is explaining his hatred for Hank Rearden, the inventor of a metal that has surpassed steel”:

He turned to her abruptly, the words exploding as if a safety fuse had blown. “He didn’t invent iron ore and blast furnaces, did he?”
“Who?”
“Rearden. He didn’t invent smelting and chemistry and air compression. He couldn’t have invented his Metal but for thousands and thousands of other people. His Metal! Why does he think it’s his? Why does he think it’s his invention? Everybody uses the work of everybody else. Nobody ever invents anything.”
She said, puzzled, “But the iron ore and all those other things were there all the time. Why didn’t anybody else make that Metal, but Mr. Rearden did?”

Good question.

1 comment:

Kiwiwit said...

It is a sad thing indeed when the POTUS shows himself to be an economic ignoramus. As I pointed out in this blog, the factory owner ultimately pays for everything because he pays the full input costs for all the goods he produces - the roads that are used to transport goods to his factories, the education of his workers, the fire service and police that protect his property, EVERYTHING. Government and those who live at the taxpayers expense pay for NOTHING. Obama himself has never had a job where he has funded his own salary.

And as for the old chestnut that the government created the Internet, please! Every router, every modem, every metre of fibre cable has been produced by a private company. Government just used it.