Two Words for the Lightworker: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Well, since the Lightworker is reprising ole' High Cheek Bones Warren's "you didn't build that" schtick, it's time to reprise my rebuttal that they don't know their damn history.  In rapidly industrializing America, the private sector did build the roads and many of the schools, or at least they created whole towns, funded by their profits so that bureaucrats essentially in their hire would do those things.  Like I said:

Elizabeth Warren Has Never Heard of Pittsburgh, PA

Before you read my analysis, check out some far better ones, here...

My friends at Say Anything capture this newbie lefty icon Elizabeth Warren getting it all wrong and spouting gibberish about people getting wealthy on the backs of "us" or something. Check it out.

Of course, she's completely ignorant and dead wrong, both on the details and the theory. Naturally, the foundational principle of this country is that it all - all resources - belongs to us as individuals in a society and we give over what we choose to the government, which we have instituted, to steward it for us according to how we want it stewarded and for as long as we want it stewarded until we change our minds, at which time we can make new arrangements as we see fit because the government is our servant. The government is instituted by us and serves our priorities. We don't owe the government the fruits of our toil so that it can build roads, we see the need for a road and we task government with the job and we give it some money to do so. We may just as well decided to build that road in some other fashion, with or without government involvement, it is up to us.

That said, Warren doesn't know her history. She apparently has never heard of "one company towns" or doesn't seem to know why Pittsburgh, PA exists or why we have the Ambassador Bridge. She apparently has never asked herself, which came first "the chicken or the egg?" Well, let me tell you honey, it was the chicken. Warren seems to think that America had all these paved roads, police forces and educated children before these horrible businesses descended on us to free ride off of these resources. She is wrong.

Our early businesses set up shop and built the necessary infrastructure themselves or demanded that government, funded by the taxes that it paid and its workers paid, do it for them. Pullman, Illinois, part of Chicago is an example of one of those towns built almost entirely by that factory owner that Warren talks about. Bethlehem, PA is almost entirely the product of the activity and investment of the Bethlehem Steel Company. There are tens of thousands of these towns across America that were built by private industry and their legacy has been ceded over to the public sector over time as this nation grew to say nothing of industries that built whole regions. The country was a series of unconnected economic zones until the privately funded railroads started connecting them. Roads came later, and mostly at the urging (and aggressive persuasion shall we say) of the burgeoning automobile and oil industries. Remember, the oil industry was originally built around kerosene for home illumination, the auto industry was a lucky second birth for oil, and the auto/oil partnership generated enormous growth and thus wages and taxes for beholden politicians to spend in order to help their friends and benefactors in industry.

Warren is felony clueless if she thinks that it all got started by the hand of government. Business got the ball rolling and handed things off. Government services came next because business was focused on business and didn't feel like devoting management talent on things like roads and schools. I'm sorry to burst Warren's bubble, but business handed this stuff off to government because it was mundane and felt that mundane people should do mundane things. If something was important that wasn't getting done, business would basically buy/direct their friends in government to do what they wanted. Otherwise, they just employed the folks and told them to bitch to their politicians to get what they wanted out of their taxes which were hived off from their wages.

For the first part of this country's history, business built America and government just filled out the paperwork. After that an experienced and emerging civil servant class used the wealth of the exploding economy to take on grander projects. It has since gotten out of control and business is now setting up shop in far flung places and building their roads and schools. People in America today can get rich because they stand on the shoulders of giants, but those giants were not government bureaucrats. People can get rich today because of they were bequeathed a legacy of infrastructure inspired and funded by the pioneering and visionary efforts of mostly private individuals.