Uncle Sam Cant Count: A History of Failed Government Investments, from Beaver Pelts to Green Energy

Livingston was a Founding Father who believed that steamboats would work well on the wide rivers of North America. Livingston and Fulton obtained a monopoly from the New York legislature for the privilege of carrying all steamboat traffic in New York for 30 years, if they could produce a working steamboat within two years. Thus, when Fulton sailed the North River up the Hudson River on a hot summer day in August , he had built the first viable steamboat and had just begun the first steamboat line with any measure of success. Fulton opened up new possibilities in transportation, marketing and city building.

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The monopoly also kept ticket prices high. Gibbons asked Vanderbilt to run steamboats in New York and charge less than the monopoly rates. Vanderbilt was intrigued by the challenge of breaking the Fulton monopoly. He became a popular figure on the Atlantic as he lowered the fares and eluded the law.

Finally, in , in the landmark case of Gibbons v. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that only the federal government, not the states, could regulate interstate commerce. This extremely popular decision opened the waters of America to competition. On the Ohio River, steamboat traffic doubled in the first year after Gibbons v.

Ogden and quadrupled after the second year. The real value of removing the Fulton monopoly was that the costs of traveling upriver dropped. Alexander Graham Bell sat calmly in his rowboat, camera in hand. Suddenly, Langley signaled, and his flying machine took off from the nearby houseboat into the air. After a wobbly start, the two wings steadied, the small engine buzzed and the unmanned plane soared over the Potomac River in a circular path.

Bell was so excited, he almost forgot to snap the picture. Langley clocked the flight at 90 seconds and computed the distance at a half-mile. But he needed money. Teddy Roosevelt, assistant secretary of war, was especially exuberant: It seems to me worthwhile for this government to try whether it will not work on a large enough scale to be of use in the event of war. Langley made his top priority the building of an engine, light in weight and strong in power.

After Words with Burton Folsom

But a bicycle mechanic named Wilbur Wright disagreed. He concluded, after studying Langley and his work carefully, that stressing engine power over glider maneuvering was wrong. He wanted to invent the airplane, in part, to make a profit. But Will knew that to make a plane that people would want to buy, or to fly in, he would have to invent one that could fly safely in all kinds of weather. To Save the Land and People. Biographies of the New World Power More.

Things that Can and Cannot Be Said. Presidents of the United States. Mule and Wagon to Automobile.

The Consequences of Cotton in Antebellum America. Complete Book of Historic Presidential Firsts. The Decline of Laissez Faire, Highway under the Hudson. How to write a great review.

These 3 fails show the U.S. is an awful boss

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Continue shopping Checkout Continue shopping. George Mitchell, who spent seventeen years developing fracking, after the high taxes on oil drilling were repealed, while the government subsidized ethanol. Product details File Size: Broadside e-books April 15, Publication Date: April 15, Sold by: Share your thoughts with other customers.

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Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention government investments uncle sam wright brothers crony capitalism government subsidies burt folsom sam count fur trade market entrepreneurs free markets political entrepreneurs book goes government failure government subsidized examples where government failures of government authors business economic failed. Showing of 39 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews.

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There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Fur trading, canals, railroads, airplanes, ocean liners The US and in many cases, British government funded or subsidized their development. In just about every one of those cases independent entrepeneurs took on the subsidized builders and developers, and delivered a better, cheaper, product. John Jacob Astor built up a fur trading operation that delivered better products at lower cost than did his government subsidized competitor, and had better relations with his Native American trDing partners, too.

Cornelius Vanderbuilt took on the subsidized British shipping and passenger line, with better, safer,and cheaper ships and rates. The Wright Brothers developed the first controlled, practical, heavier than air craft while spending about five percent of whatbthe Federal Government was paying Samuel Langley to develop his impractical craft. There are some things that government does better than private initiative, but the list is shorter than you might think. Public welfare, largely but not exclusively.

You might think so, but the earliest free public education in this country was provided by privately funded schools, who were legislated out of doing so by powerful political interests that supported a State monopoly. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Conventional history books focus more on superficial details without attempting to understand the underlying causes. It is one thing to explain that there was high inflation and an energy crisis in the s, but quite another to deftly explain the government policies which directly led to it.

It is all to common for such events to be depicted as externally caused and inevitable, when in fact they are both heavily influenced by government policy and quite avoidable. Whereas the traditional textbooks have the general theme of "a problem occurred, often due to the failure of free markets to self-regulate, and the government came in and fixed it. Most textbooks content themselves to superficially describe a historical problem and then the government policy created with the intent of addressing it.

The full causes of the problems in the first place and the effects of the well-intentioned policies are seldom questioned. This book addresses these conventional failings. Burt and Anita Folsom's insights are sound, as in their other books, but they are sometimes repetitive and patronizing in their tone. This is especially true of the introduction.

The tone of his early books, "Myth of the Robber Barons" and "Michigan Entrepreneurs" was more focused and scholarly. This book includes many of the same stories, but with less detail and more judgmental language.