A major part of the socialist platform is to protect industries that may not be feasible without government protections. Hell, one of the over 2000 federal government programs is to compensate milk producers for “lost” profits. Farmers get subsidies to “protect” their industry. GM received a very large check and transferred major chunk of ownership to the United States government to “protect” an American industry. It happens all the time. Its sad and crushes true innovation and prevents true wealth creation.
The reason I bring this up is I visited a train park in Scottsdale. A portion of the train park was a museum which dedicated a small portion of their floor space to Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse Code, a necessary precursor to the telegraph. Prior the invention of the telegraph, mail traversed the country two ways, train or pony express. If the train system did not reach your area, you were forced to use the pony express. Within a week of the country’s first transcontinental telegraph, the pony express filed for bankruptcy. Now, lets imagine federal bureaucrats wanted to protect an American industry. Retrospectively, we know this would have proved an awful idea. The Telegraph led to the telephone, which lead to the internet and all the other wonderful things modern communications offer, like this blog! Bureaucrats could have placed regulations on evil telegraph companies to prevent the destruction of the pony express. Thank god they didn’t. We need to let businesses die as they lose their competitive edge. This allows the reallocation of resources to other more fruitful tasks. Everyone wins in the long run.