Business needs government, people need government, we all need government. We don't need to drown government in the bathtub and we don't need a know-it-all, do it-all government. We need a government that helps business and people achieve their legitimate goals.
From the earliest days of this country we needed town governments to stop criminals and build roads. The U.S. Constitution calls for the federal government to establish post offices and post roads. Business needed a postal system that will cover the country; it was much more efficient than sending every message by your own courier. Business needed the post roads to move goods beyond the local towns. Farmers needed good roads to get their produce to market.
The national economy took a quantum leap with the building of the railroads. They would have been delayed many years without various government concessions and subsidies.
Flying would be a nightmare without government provided airports and traffic control.
The Interstate highway system changed the economy in many ways. The downside is all the locally taxable property that disappeared. The upside is the greater easy of moving people and goods around the country. A business could send a truckload of goods to a specific destination without having to wait for a boxcar to be attached and detached to various trains.
The Defense Department financed some of the development of the Web through research grants to develop ARPANet. How many businesses have been created and fortunes made because of the Internet? Are you old enough to remember CompuServe and similar services that were only accessible to subscribers at costs that could accumulate very rapidly? I remember having to have at least three email accounts so that customers could reach me.
GPS was a military system that was used by individuals but only with distorted signals. President Clinton began relaxing these controls. This spawned "a $6 billion ecosystem of location-based companies." See Wired link below. And some accuse the Democrats of being business-unfriendly.
Have you used Google Earth? Would this be possible without all the government provided pictures?
Now President Obama is ready to open up government data that, if it wasn't kept buried in some obscure government office, was in some overwhelming form that made it hard for many people to understand. As the government moves to standard formats for much of its data, private companies will reformat it in forms that their customers can use. The formation of these companies or the new business for existing companies will be a stimulus in itself.
See "Wired-o-Nomics: Transparency as a Stimulus" for more.
