On 6/17/2015 6:33 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote: > >> On Jun 17, 2015, at 5:30 PM, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote: >> >> (snip) >> >> The irony, of course, is that the interstate highway system was championed by Eisenhower (whose credentials were, last I checked, still immaculate), for a reason intuitively obvious to any Civilization player - to be able to move his stacks of Armor and other units rapidly around the country to respond to an invasion and/or atomic attack. > > Ehhh…A system proposed by his SecDef…whose ‘day job’ had been CEO of GM :-) "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." :) > Conflict of interest? I see no conflict of interest! Our interests mesh perfectly! :-P > > Strictly speaking the Interstate system’s *excuse* for federal funding was defense purposes, as highways had been state and private endeavors earlier, the *purpose* was that the US needed a modern highway system for all the usual infrastructural needs of a rapidly growing world-dominating economy, and that it advantaged automobiles over rail was just fine with the then-dominant US auto industry. > > Rather like the Internet, a few years later... IMO, a large, strong, heavily-industrialized polity needs a robust infrastructure. It's just that everyone would rather someone else paid for it. :/ ObTrav: the X-Boat network - its creation, maintenance, and (proposed) upgrades, and funding for all of the above. -- --------------- Kelly St. Clair xxxxxx@efn.org
