The Government should be making software components

The government should be in the business of doing things that are not profitable, but useful - for example, roads.

The first roads were toll roads, modeled after the canals and railroads. But what was needed were roads that went everywhere. So wagon tracks, going everywhere, developed naturally and farmers prospered. Unfortunately, roads in some areas, such as swampy land, were too expense for local resources to build, so people demanded the government build them. The government, eager to expand the economy, complied. The Government, especially the Federal government, took responsibility for the economy - and this was the major reason for the Federal government in the first place. A loose confederation of states wasn't cutting it.

This trend accelerated greatly after the automobile - which had to have good roads. This culminated in our superhighway network - very expensive, but no one questions its value. Good roads are one factor that separates the developed countries from the undeveloped ones: they have a developed physical infrastructure.

Backward countries have no idea what an infrastructure is - and no idea about how to get one, because they have not first developed a modern cultural infrastructure - on which everything else depends. As I have said before, over and over, the development of a modern world in Northern Europe and North America, was painful and violent, and will probably not be repeated.

But we can help the advanced world we have already by using our smarts, and developing our strong point: software - on which the global economy and the Internet depends. Relying on the private sector to do this for us is not going to work, because the basic work, the basic research, in which everything else depends, is not compatible with the profit motive.

The people who do this are motivated solely by the desire to do good work - and giving it away free for others to use and improve. Once these tools are available, companies can jump right in and use them - in clever ways no one dreamed of - but the basic tools have to be available first.

In other words, the government can jump-start new industries by giving it new tools to use.

Other areas are badly in need of some basic research also: for example economics, which still exists in a dark ages of its own.

America is a big country, and needs a big government - not a small one. But we seem intent on destroying it - and ourselves.