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IPFS News Link • Government

Crony Capitalism and the Transcontinental Railroads

• http://www.lewrockwell.com, By Ryan McMaken
 Notably, he was attacked by approximately no one for talking up a government program that in reality should be best remembered as a pioneering feat in government corruption, corporate welfare, and immense waste.

Although not related in quite the heroic terms it once was, the trans­continental railroads retain their place as one of the great alleged suc­cess stories of nineteenth-century America. According to the popular myths, the same myths now exploited by the president, and challenged by no one, the railroads, these supposedly great monuments to the ingenuity of American industrialists, united East and West by bringing together the economies of the West coast and the East coast. This government program then set the stage for the massive economic growth and national greatness that would occur in the United States during the early twentieth century.

1 Comments in Response to

Comment by Dennis Treybil
Entered on:

 The James J. Hill story can be found here:

http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-Economics&Finance/+Doc-Economics&Finance-GovernmentInfluence&Meddling/PoliticalEntrepreneur-Hill&TheGreatNorthernRailroad.htm

This is an account of a private concerns efforts to build a transcontinental railroad and what happened to him.  What happened to him was similar in character to what happened to Spooner's 19th-century UPS company.

Enjoy,

DC Treybil



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