06 October, 2011

Does America need more Steve Jobs, or more Goverment?


In 1989, merely 22 years ago, Apple introduced its Macintosh Portable.  It came with a 16Mhz CPU, 1 Meg of RAM, and a 10 inch black and white active matrix LCD.  The price, $7,300, was affordable by only the best off of Americans.

Today, even though the dollar is worth only about half of what it was then, you can buy a laptop 1000 time more powerful, for a price 10% of that of that old Mac, making reliable, high speed computing available to almost everyone.

How is this possible?  It wasn’t achieved by government edict, nor through the wisdom of some central planning board.  Rather it happened because of the type of competition found only in free markets.

Think about that for a moment.   Then think how much cheaper, better, and more available healthcare, or perhaps education, might be if government had kept its hands off of them.