As much as we may have thought the government was a force for good, it has become more of a force for profit. Our government is essentially now a giant private corporation, and the role that it plays in this process is both frightening and alarming.
In his book, “The End of Liberalism” (and in his TED talk too), libertarian congressman Ron Paul has expressed many of the same worries. In one of his most famous points, he argued that the U.S. government is a “business” of the most extreme sort, in which money is used to buy votes and power. Paul has even gone so far as to say that the government “has become a business… for the enrichment of a few.
The problem is that there are many different forms of government involvement that are not entirely transparent. Government involvement in business is a bit of a catch-all term. The government’s involvement is usually one or more of three things: government-backed corporations, government-invested corporations, or government-owned corporations.
In its initial form, the government-backed corporation was the government itself. When corporations (usually big ones) were created and started to take actions, they tended to make a few bucks and then go back to the government for support. This was most common with banks and insurance companies. Today the government-backed corporations (or government-run companies) tend to be very large and very profitable.
It’s a bit of a mystery to me why the government spends so much money on things like making sure that companies are not “too big to fail.” It’s been a pretty efficient way for the government to get rich. I suppose it goes back to the idea of “bureaucracy.” The problem is when you have a government-owned corporation, it’s pretty difficult to fire the CEO.
The problem with the government-backed corporations is that they tend to be very slow to take on new products, which is why they are often slow to adopt new technology. A government-owned company is a company that’s still controlled by the government, which means that they’re inherently slow to adopt changes in technology because as long as the government is involved in the process they are not always willing to go with the change.
In reality, the government has only recently started making some real investments in technology. The government is the most frequent investor in tech startups, and by a large margin. For example, in the early 2000s the government invested $100 million into the first Apple product, the iPod, and then $100 million on the iPhone, which is still worth $1 billion today.
But it’s also true the government has invested into some of the most successful startups, including IBM, and Microsoft. So if you’re wondering if the government is not that involved in these companies, the answer is probably yes. The government has invested in companies like, Microsoft, which are leading the charge in the world of cloud computing. It’s important to note that Microsoft has never been a government company, and the investment has not been made by the government.
The investment is so important because cloud computing is rapidly becoming the primary way for businesses to run their business. Microsoft’s cloud business is worth $7.5 billion and has been growing at a rate of $300 million a day. I’m not sure how that compares to the government’s investment in IBM, but I suspect that the latter is very much more than a government investment.
You might think that the government would be more likely to invest in a company like Microsoft than a company like IBM, but as you might expect in the digital age, that isn’t always the case. The government has certainly made investments in technology companies, but most of these have gone un-noticed.
