Thanks, Uncle Sam, for GPS!
By Randall Holcombe • Wednesday September 26, 2012 11:19 AM PDT • 15 Comments
John Stossel has often said “government can’t do anything better than people in a free market.” I recognize that lots of readers of The Beacon will agree, so let me throw out one example that I believe counters Stossel’s claim: GPS.
Uncle Sam put up those satellites that produce GPS signals, and none of the GPS devices we use would work without that government infrastructure. It’s easy to argue government does this better than the market, because government is the only producer of GPS signals.
I’m not talking about your GPS receiver, of course. The market has done a great job of producing lots of devices that decode those GPS signals and put them to good use for consumers. But those devices only work because government has produced the infrastructure, in the form of a set of orbiting satellites that broadcast the GPS signals that are so commonly used today.
What does government do better than the market? Produce GPS navigation signals.
Tags: Economics, Free Market, Government subsidies, Innovation, Science, Technology, The State 
They robbed us to do it. Yes, the government is better at robbing people than the market. We shouldn’t assume that the market wouldn’t or couldn’t have done it w/o the government. The government just happened to do it (having robbed us first), and then the market capitalized on it.
Skyler J. Collins | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
I agree, the private sector could have done it for better than half the cost. The government was able to do it because of the space program that NoBoma has scrapped.
Wes Forehand | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
The government doesn’t build anything. Private contractors do. Yes,government has a small but important roll in the scheme of things. Such as,legal protections,environmental protections,coordinating directions,coordinating construction and protecting private property rights etc. Most everything else including GPS satellites and the rockets that lift them into space are designed and built by private contractors. GE,McDonnell Douglas,Sperry,Verizon etc. In fact the largest American infrastructure project of the 19th Century were the Railroads. Of course much of the land was given or sold cheaply by the Federal Government. But,then again,the Federal Government took the land from the Native Americans and or the Spanish,Mexicans or bought it from France with the people’s taxes. But the whole system,including the locomotives,rolling stock,rails,ties and support structures(bridges,stations etc.) was built with private capital and engineering.
libertarian jerry | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
You picked a bad example.
There are plenty of telecommunication satellites (owned privately or by other nations) and weather satellites that could be modified to send GPS signals. Our federal government contracted for and launched its own GPS satellites because it wanted full control of GPS for military purposes. It can shut down any or all of the GPS signals whenever it wishes. I would greatly prefer a privately operated location and positioning system that is not under federal government control.
MingoV | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
Thanks for the comments, Skyler, Wes, jerry, and MingoV. I figured that posting this here would elicit some good arguments against what I said. I’d be happy to hear more!
Jerry, I wonder if your argument isn’t along the same lines as saying Southwest didn’t build an airline, because Boeing built their jets.
And Skyler, Wes, and MingoV, I don’t disagree with what you said, but it is still the government that is producing those GPS signals, not private firms (for whatever reason).
Randall Holcombe | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
Randall.....Many of the railroads(PRR,Santa FE,New York Central to name a few) designed and built,during the age of steam,much of their own locomotives and rolling stock. Diesels were and are mainly a different story. Again,uncle sugar coordinates and plays an important role but the engineering and building is mostly done by private contractors. Just as the government’s tanks are built by GM and Chrysler,its ships by Ingalls,its machine guns by Browning etc.,etc.
libertarian jerry | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
Yes, jerry, and Apple’s iPhone is built by Foxconn, in China. I know the federal government contracted out to have its GPS satellites built, just like Apple contracted out to have its iPhone built. Would you say to Apple, “You didn’t build that,” because Foxconn actually manufactured the iPhone?
Randall Holcombe | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
Randall....I’m not confusing the tools used in the building with the actual building. But without the tools the GPS couldn’t exist. It is the mind of man that creates the tools. As I said earlier the government,to a certain extent and in certain areas,coordinates the building. If the GPS was necessary for the world market and there was a demand for that market and the private sector was left alone I’m sure the GPS system would have been built. Just like the railroads,broadcast radio and TV,modern plumbing,air conditioning,the automobile etc.,etc.
libertarian jerry | Sep 26, 2012 | Reply
I agree with you, jerry. But I don’t see anything you said that contradicts what I said in my original post.
Randall Holcombe | Sep 27, 2012 | Reply
You can’t say the gov’t does something better if they are the only one doing it, because for some thing to be better there must be another one in existence to make a comparision.
Paul | Sep 27, 2012 | Reply
I can name several things that governments do better than private actors do: kill, steal & imprison.
Paul | Sep 27, 2012 | Reply
The deal is, if the government gives itself a monopoly to build something and would punish anyone messing with its territorial imperatives, then yes, the government will do it, especially if it serves imperial purposes. I see my job, as a freedom-lover, to reduce the government’s ability to hog things and to assert a need for itself to have monopoly. A classic example is currency. I am grateful to Ron Paul’s studied observation that the people will use other means if elites hog too much currency. Things that would require alliances to do, such as space stuff, will get that cooperation free of government when the government messes up badly enough, which it is currently doing.
Mary Saunders | Oct 1, 2012 | Reply
Mary Saunders touches on the real fallacy here. Until about ten years ago, the government intentionally made it entirely impossible for private industry to exploit space commercially, not without being funneled through and filtered by the government’s gatekeeper, NASA, who would and did put the kibosh on any initiative that displeased the government.
Anybody who wanted to establish an independent commercial launch capability had to apply for federal permits that were technically available, but in practice were as impossible to get as Chicago carry permits or federal marijuana tax stamps.
Henry Bowman | Oct 2, 2012 | Reply
You know, while I’m thinking of it, let me throw out an apt counterexample here.
When the government first allowed us peons to use its precious GPS signals, there were two GPS signals available. The secure one, available only to the military, told you pretty much exactly what you were; while the public got an intentionally biased version (“selective availability”) which offset every reading an undisclosed distance in an undisclosed direction, and in which the bias value periodically changed in an unpredictable fashion. The theory was that the government didn’t want to broadcast a publicly-available signal that our enemies could use to target their missiles to us.
The only reason you get to use the unbiased signal today is that certain clever CIVILIANS figured out that a fixed base station that knew exactly where it was could trivially determine the exact bias in the signal at any given time, and broadcast a correction signal which inexpensive CIVILIAN GPS receivers could subtract from the public GPS signal to get the military-grade signal. Confronted with a horse that had already left the barn, Clinton signed an executive order making the military-grade signal available to everyone.
So if it weren’t for FREE-MARKET CIVILIANS, your Lexus might be telling you to turn left off cliffs.
Henry Bowman | Oct 2, 2012 | Reply
Thanks for all the comments. I figured this post would bring a lot of disagreement, and it has! But think a bit more about this example.
Certainly private companies could orbit their own GPS satellites if they thought they could do a better job than Uncle Sam. There are lots of private satellites in orbit that provide similar services (that is, sending communication signals to Earth). MingoV made this point above. That suggests that in this case, Uncle Sam’s product is pretty good.
The argument that because Uncle Sam produces the signals and allows free access, therefore private producers couldn’t compete doesn’t seem to hold up, considering that in other areas, such as schools and courts, government also provides free access, yet there are private schools and private arbitrators people are willing to pay for because they believe the quality is better. So, just because Uncle Sam provides free access to GPS signals doesn’t mean private providers wouldn’t also provide them, if they thought they could provide signals superior enough that people would pay to get better signals.
The example still looks pretty good to me.
Randall Holcombe | Oct 2, 2012 | Reply