On 6/17/2015 6:33 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
>
>> On Jun 17, 2015, at 5:30 PM, Kelly St. Clair <kellys@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.

--
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Kelly St. Clair
kellys@efn.org