Public Risks, Private Profits, and Prosperity

Public Risks, Private Profits, and Prosperity
by the Association for Plural Economics and Sven Hergovich

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2016/11/433779.shtml

All personal and corporate achievements are based on state investments in roads, schools, hospitals, community centers, airwaves, food safety, and water quality. The Apples and Googles of this world are businesses that developed the results of decades-long state-financed research into marketable products.

States are able and ready to bear risks that free enterprise businesses cannot take. This includes projects fraught with great uncertainty as to whether the funds will ever flow into marketable products.

The late Bobby Kennedy said the GDP measures everything except what makes life worth living: public spirit, cooperation, self-sacrifice and care of nature.