re: #24 Buck

And you think that anyone with the same “whole system” would win just as much. I don’t.

No, but it helps the business succeed.

Let’s get to your analogy (with my additions): Let’s remove the endorsers from the equation. The track winner has absolutely no money incoming from any type of endorsement. Can he succeed? Of course. But it also means he needs to take a full time job to pay his expenses, his family expenses, pay his coaches, pay his doctors, and pay for the trips, etc.

Now, assuming he finds a 40-hour week job that pays enough to cover all the expenses the endorsers would have covered, the athlete goes from being able to train 40-60 hours a week at the minimum to train at most 20 hours a week. We are talking that, thanks to having no endorser, he has to cut his training regime by a third. He might still be able to win, but it will be an uphill battle to do so.

What you want to equate is that, putting a mediocre athlete in the same system as the winner will not make him a winner. Perhaps, but a mediocre athlete that starts in the Shoulders of Giants can beat a better athlete that has to raise to the Giant by themselves.

Same thing happens with business. Solyndras will happen. Dot Com Bubble of the 90s will happen again (under other name). And it has happened many times before, and it will happen again. Bad business will die eventually. But giving companies the infrastructure they need so they can focus on their business without any distraction is important. It’s the best way for the government to “get out of the [business] way”: by providing the services and infrastructure to allow them to succeed.

Now, imagine if every business had to spend time getting construct their own roads and bridges, trying to get their employees fully educated so they can contribute, trying to get a full security force to protect themselves, trying to get a complete system to protect them from fires… The business will be spending most of their money, not on getting on with their business, but on all these side issues that are critical to their success.