First of all, let’s begin with a fundamental, foundational, truth: Central Planning has never worked, it is the equivalent of believing one is able to recreate the earth from an end product, e.g., believing it is possible to reverse engineer Planet Earth using an Apple. The age-old conflict began with believing One can entrust the creation of an economic success to an apparatus that has no concept or grasp of the components, the integral necessities, that lie back or behind any creative motive or outcome. I am speak, specially, of the engine of “compelling cause.”
Politician do have a notion of “compelling cause” but theirs is of a different strain, it is more closely associated with “vice” and while they believe legislative actions are themselves a compelling cause in reality all they do is license bureaucracies who, inevitably, morph into self-serving black-holes or mechanisms for manipulation by financial interest who’ve helped finance their creation.
Government is capable, within and about a construct narrowly defined, of structuring an environment for “compelling cause” to occur but it is incapable of creating it. Government can foster and endorse economic development but to allow it to administrate it is a guaranteed recipe for disaster and there are countless examples of this but no more conspicuous than the fact that there is no single example of any government self-propagating success.
Example:
Amtrak. Billions of Dollars spent, by Government, to maintain a 19th Century Technology that continues to predictably fail and underdeliver. Governments, Fed/State/Local, spend Billions (now moving into the Trillions) creating individual rail systems, purchasing new right-of-ways, building massive infrastructure projects and using Foreign Procured Equipment on rail systems with no integrated capabilities with either existing or planned rail systems.
Result: Trillions of Dollars wasted, utterly wasted, on imaginary concepts that fail to even begin to approach a viable or progenitive purpose and yet is is entirely successful in doing precisely what government-run projects do: Waste money, provide mediocre services, limited application and no measurable relief on any of the primary reasons used to support expanding upon its failure, i.e., no relief on surface road maintenance or expansion and certainly no definitive environmental or energy management success and no fungible domestic productive or technological development. It aims to fail and that’s precisely what it does.
Alternative:
- Identify four regional grouping of all 50 states. Each of the 4 Groups will appoint, by a method of their representative States agreement, the Administrators serving for no more than two terms. This group, while fully autonomous, will vote, from their ranks, a Cabinet Level Sr. Administrator who will oversee general operation and interface with the Federal Government. While the This Group will have Congressional Oversight Congress will have no actionable administrative authority other than those provided by the Charter of the Organization and as affirmed, directly, by the four regional representatives acting under the direction of their respective States. The purpose of this 4-State Grouping (4SG), initially, is to design a national passenger rail-system using existing rights-of-way (ROW’s) and thru the domestic development of proprietary advanced technologies seed and engage U.S. Owned and Operated Companies in the design, development, manufacturing and maintenance of the System.
- 4SG will approach each of the top three U.S. Rail Companies – the combination of which own existing rights-of-way traversing the entire nation requesting a full and complete rendering of all active and dormant ROW’s the purpose of which, unless eminent domain proceedings become necessary, is to use the details of this rendering for the selection of routes that most efficiently serve and integrate the 4 regions into the exclusive use of the proposed passenger rail-system in exchange for which these Rail Companies will be given operational control of the RSG System, compensated on a percentage of service-revenue basis the rate of which will be tethered to an efficiency of operation matrix.
- While there are so many remarkable opportunities, technological, economic and social advantages to a concept such as the National Rail Concept briefly discussed here let us suspend the discussion at this point with this final comment: Failure in government is inevitable when the boundaries of its operational order are breached and become a certainty when there are no guarantees of swift and punishing consequences accompanying the deliberate and calculated exhibitions of their abuse.
There are so many opportunities available for sowing a new wave of prosperity, sadly, those in government are simply not equipped with the spirit or the vision for seeding its growth; well perhaps there are four possible five member of Congress, the House & Senate, who do.
The Biden proposal is, predictably, hopeless in its scope and completely absent in thought, actionable promise and thoughtful relevance; it is complete as an apparatus of pure political intents. For the record, B-Joe, Unions don’t build People, Unions don’t build businesses. Other than building one massive money-making political influence acquisition machine, what Unions claim that they do, i.e., represent the Labor Force, in practical terms should actuality be the function of Elected Officials in Washington or in the State House(s) across the Nation which begs the following question: If you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing Mr./Ms. Legislator what then are you doing? Yes, I know, representing the interests of the Unions, but of course.
Suffice it to say, we have studied, fully, the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Bill and it is, without hesitation, a certainty that it will do none of what is being promised or claimed as its goals or advantages none of which, oddly enough, if it did would actually have no lasting economic value to the Domestic Economy whatsoever.
The punishing resolve of this Administration’s quagmire of legislative sludge, combined with the proposed Tax Changes including the proposed Global Wealth Tax, will most certainly drain the fuel tanks that feed a durable and vibrant economic engine the effects of which will be severely damaging to this Nation’s Economic standing but most devastating to the most formidable economic force of all, Middle America.
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
