You Didn't Build That: Readings from the Book of Barack

[boedicca]

Classic Iowahawk:

1 In the beginning Govt created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the economy was formless and void, darkness was over the surface of the ATMs, and the Spirit of Govt was hovering over the land.

3 And Govt said, “Let there be spending,” and there was spending. 4 Govt saw that the spending was good, and that it separated the light from the darkness. 5 Govt called the spending Investments, and this he did in the first day.

6 Then Govt said, “Let there be roads and bridges across the waters, and let dams divide the waters from the waters.” 7 Thus Govt made the infrastructure and the patronage jobs for eternity under the firmament from the Potomac which was above the firmament; and it was so. 8 And Govt called the firmament Washington. This Govt did on the second day.

9 Then Govt said, “Let the regulations and the guidlines under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the Bureaus appear”; and it was so. 10 And Govt called the Bureaus demigovts, and the gathering together of them He called AFSCME. And Govt saw that it was good....


iowahawk: You Didn't Build That

 

[rdean]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

--------------

He's right.

 

[boedicca]

Your funny bone is broken, hun.

Get on the waiting list for Obamacare.

 

[rdean]

Your funny bone is broken, hun.

Get on the waiting list for Obamacare.

Health Care medical bills, the number one cause of bankruptcy. Republicans think that's great. It's why they want to end Medicare. We obviously need more bankruptcy and more people suffering. What a sadistic bunch.

 

[Full-Auto]

Your funny bone is broken, hun.

Get on the waiting list for Obamacare.

Health Care, the number one cause of bankruptcy. Republicans think that's great. It's why they want to end Medicare. We obviously need more bankruptcy and more people suffering. What a sadistic bunch.

Quit lying that was debunked.

 

[boedicca]

Your funny bone is broken, hun.

Get on the waiting list for Obamacare.

Health Care medical bills, the number one cause of bankruptcy. Republicans think that's great. It's why they want to end Medicare. We obviously need more bankruptcy and more people suffering. What a sadistic bunch.

That is nonsense (link?).

The number one cause of bankruptcy is too much debt and not enough income. The Obamacare propagandists use any doctor's bill on a BK list as proof that it was health care spending that caused the BK.

 

[Vel]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

--------------

He's right.

You should make that Obama quote your new signature all the way til election day.

 

[daveman]

Your funny bone is broken, hun.

Get on the waiting list for Obamacare.

Is Chronic Stick-Up-The-Ass covered? The death panels will probably put him down.

 

[boedicca]

Indeed. And fie on him for trying to derail this wonderful thread dedicated to the comic genius of Iowahawk.

I lurve him!

 

[buckeye45_73]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

--------------

He's right.

No he's not, because while you get help in life, you also get credit for your success. What was the point of his quote? I mean in an action sense, why make that quote?

 

[g5000]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

So if you are unsuccessful, no one along the line gave you some help.

There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.

There was a great teacher in no one else's life?

Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.

Someone helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed EVERYONE to thrive. This system was not kept from anyone. Everyone has access to it.

Somebody invested in roads and bridges.

For everyone. Everyone has access to the roads and bridges.

If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Really? Who?

The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

The internet is available to everyone. No one is denied access to it.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The point is, if you fail, it is because you did not do what it takes to succeed and the other guy did. Simple as that. Eat it.

He's right.

He's completely wrong.

 

[flacaltenn]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

--------------

He's right.

I know that logic will just hurt your empty head RDean. ("bless his heart" as we say down here)

But Obama was referring to SUCCESSFUL outcomes correct? The reasoning was that "... you had help" in your success..

Now -- for that to BE TRUE.. We should test it against all UNsuccessful outcomes as well..

All of those UNDERachievers, UNDERperformers, or the just plain unlucky.. Who HELPED THEM to their sad outcomes? Was there a teacher involved that failed them? Was there not a bridge close enough to them? Could they not find a convienient road? Was their weekly investment in the State-Owned lottery not "helpful"?

We need to round up all their "HELPERS" and bring them before the tribunal to see exactly WHO is responsible for their failure.. Because "they didn't FAIL on their own"...

 

[buckeye45_73]

suprise no response from dean, he apparently doesnt know why Obama made his famous quote

 

[Zoom-boing]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

--------------

He's right.

So you acknowledge that Obama didn't get OBL "on his own", he had help along the way via Georgie and the previous administration. Good for you for seeing that light!

 

[flacaltenn]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

--------------

He's right.

You should make that Obama quote your new signature all the way til election day.

I'm thinking that this speech will be studied for a century in future Poly Sci courses as one of the most damaging self-inflicted wounds during an election cycle..

Here's hoping it becomes a classic!!!!

 

[LeftofLeft]

No matter what Obama takes credit for in debates, be it saving General Motors or Killing OBL, all Romney needs to counter, " you did not do that on your own, Mr. President."

 

[Political Junky]

Your funny bone is broken, hun.

Get on the waiting list for Obamacare.

Health Care medical bills, the number one cause of bankruptcy. Republicans think that's great. It's why they want to end Medicare. We obviously need more bankruptcy and more people suffering. What a sadistic bunch.

That is nonsense (link?).

The number one cause of bankruptcy is too much debt and not enough income. The Obamacare propagandists use any doctor's bill on a BK list as proof that it was health care spending that caused the BK.

Study Links Medical Costs and Personal Bankruptcy - Businessweek


Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.

Medically related bankruptcies have been rising steadily for decades. In 1981, only 8% of families filing for bankruptcy cited a serious medical problem as the reason, while a 2001 study of bankruptcies in five states by the same researchers found that illness or medical bills contributed to 50% of all filings. This newest, nationwide study, conducted before the start of the current recession by Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School, Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, and Deborah Thorne, a sociology professor at Ohio University, found that the filers were for the most part solidly middle class before medical disaster hit. Two-thirds owned their home and three-fifths had gone to college.

But medically bankrupt families with private insurance reported average out-of pocket medical bills of $17,749, while the uninsured's bills averaged $26,971. Of the families who started out with insurance but lost it during the course of their illness, medical bills averaged $22,658. "For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection. Most of us have policies with so many loopholes, co-payments, and deductibles that illness can put you in the poorhouse," said lead author Himmelstein. "Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy."

 

[ScienceRocks]

 

[Annie]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

So if you are unsuccessful, no one along the line gave you some help.

There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.

There was a great teacher in no one else's life?



Someone helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed EVERYONE to thrive. This system was not kept from anyone. Everyone has access to it.





For everyone. Everyone has access to the roads and bridges.



Really? Who?



The internet is available to everyone. No one is denied access to it.

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

The point is, if you fail, it is because you did not do what it takes to succeed and the other guy did. Simple as that. Eat it.

He's right.

He's completely wrong.

Indeed Obama and rdean are wrong, on several levels.

Big one though: government and internet:

Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet? - WSJ.com

A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."

It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.

For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project. In a 1946 article in The Atlantic titled "As We May Think," Bush defined an ambitious peacetime goal for technologists: Build what he called a "memex" through which "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."

That fired imaginations, and by the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network—a "world-wide web." The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: "The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks."

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

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Xerox PARC

Xerox PARC headquarters.

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

According to a book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning" (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. "We have a more immediate problem than they do," Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. "We have more networks than they do." Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers "were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with."

So having created the Internet, why didn't Xerox become the biggest company in the world? The answer explains the disconnect between a government-led view of business and how innovation actually happens.

Executives at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., were focused on selling copiers. From their standpoint, the Ethernet was important only so that people in an office could link computers to share a copier. Then, in 1979, Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement whereby Xerox's venture-capital division invested $1 million in Apple, with the requirement that Jobs get a full briefing on all the Xerox PARC innovations. "They just had no idea what they had," Jobs later said, after launching hugely profitable Apple computers using concepts developed by Xerox.

Xerox's copier business was lucrative for decades, but the company eventually had years of losses during the digital revolution. Xerox managers can console themselves that it's rare for a company to make the transition from one technology era to another.

As for the government's role, the Internet was fully privatized in 1995, when a remaining piece of the network run by the National Science Foundation was closed—just as the commercial Web began to boom. Economist Tyler Cowen wrote in 2005: "The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia."

It's important to understand the history of the Internet because it's too often wrongly cited to justify big government. It's also important to recognize that building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market. As the contrast between Xerox and Apple shows, few business leaders succeed in this challenge. Those who do—not the government—deserve the credit for making it happen.

 

[flacaltenn]

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.

So if you are unsuccessful, no one along the line gave you some help.



There was a great teacher in no one else's life?



Someone helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed EVERYONE to thrive. This system was not kept from anyone. Everyone has access to it.





For everyone. Everyone has access to the roads and bridges.



Really? Who?



The internet is available to everyone. No one is denied access to it.



The point is, if you fail, it is because you did not do what it takes to succeed and the other guy did. Simple as that. Eat it.



He's completely wrong.

Indeed Obama and rdean are wrong, on several levels.

Big one though: government and internet:

Crovitz: Who Really Invented the Internet? - WSJ.com

A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."

It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.

For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project. In a 1946 article in The Atlantic titled "As We May Think," Bush defined an ambitious peacetime goal for technologists: Build what he called a "memex" through which "wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified."

That fired imaginations, and by the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network—a "world-wide web." The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: "The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks."

If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

Enlarge Image
image
Close
image
Xerox PARC

Xerox PARC headquarters.

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

According to a book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning" (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. "We have a more immediate problem than they do," Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. "We have more networks than they do." Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers "were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with."

So having created the Internet, why didn't Xerox become the biggest company in the world? The answer explains the disconnect between a government-led view of business and how innovation actually happens.

Executives at Xerox headquarters in Rochester, N.Y., were focused on selling copiers. From their standpoint, the Ethernet was important only so that people in an office could link computers to share a copier. Then, in 1979, Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement whereby Xerox's venture-capital division invested $1 million in Apple, with the requirement that Jobs get a full briefing on all the Xerox PARC innovations. "They just had no idea what they had," Jobs later said, after launching hugely profitable Apple computers using concepts developed by Xerox.

Xerox's copier business was lucrative for decades, but the company eventually had years of losses during the digital revolution. Xerox managers can console themselves that it's rare for a company to make the transition from one technology era to another.

As for the government's role, the Internet was fully privatized in 1995, when a remaining piece of the network run by the National Science Foundation was closed—just as the commercial Web began to boom. Economist Tyler Cowen wrote in 2005: "The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia."

It's important to understand the history of the Internet because it's too often wrongly cited to justify big government. It's also important to recognize that building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market. As the contrast between Xerox and Apple shows, few business leaders succeed in this challenge. Those who do—not the government—deserve the credit for making it happen.

We need more of this kind of analysis.. The DARPA folks bought EXISTING ideas!!!

Ideas that WOULD have found commercial application in a matter of time.. The money DARPA accelerated the process (perhaps -- because THEY weren't thinking universal adoption -- it was an elitist vision for institutions)