by Paul Hamby
Last Wednesday June 11, the Missouri House voted on the unconstitutional multi-subject bill that authorizes funding for new stadiums for the KC Chiefs and KC Royals.
The bill passed with 90 yes votes. It will most likely be challenged in court.
The Stadium subsidy bill, SB3, uses the power of government to pick winners and losers. It takes money from many Missouri Citizens and gifts it to the 1% wealthiest in our state.
Now, a lesson in free market economics:
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell got his first patent for a telephone. For the next 125 years, we had landline corded telephones connected by copper wires. The companies that operated the phone systems were government-controlled monopolies. Technology changed very little in 125 years because there was no incentive for change. But outside the government controlled phone companies, there was a competition of ideas for how to create a Mobile Phone that worked on radio waves and not a copper wire connection.
Motorola was a leader in research and technology. Their inventor made the first ever mobile phone call - and it was a prank call! That call was made on April 3, 1973, by Motorola employee Martin Cooper. He used a prototype of what would become the Motorola DynaTAC 8000x, the world's first commercial cell phone. Cooper stood near a 900 MHz base station on Sixth Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets, in New York City and placed a call to their competitor’s headquarters; Bell Labs in New Jersey.
It took another 25 years for mobile phones, cell tower networks and nationwide coverage to develop.
The competition was intense and worldwide. In May 1999, the first cell phone camera was introduced in Japan. In 2002, Canadian company Blackberry introduced a popular smartphone. Texting and emailing from a mobile device were cutting edge technology. In 2007, Apple jumped into the field with the iPhone. Thousands of the world's best inventors competed to create a lightweight digital phone that anyone could afford.
As you read this story, possibly on a smartphone, that is really a handheld computer with an amazing camera and 4+ ways to communicate, please remember that it was through free markets and competition that such an amazing device was invented. Today, an estimated 40 million people are employed worldwide in the cell phone industry.
If our only choices were limited to government chosen monopolies, we would still be communicating via an elaborate network of connected aging copper conductors.
Free Markets improve our quality of life. Free markets and competition create jobs based on what people want, rather than what our elected officials dictate that you should want.
Economist Milton Friedman believed the government should not interfere with the economy. He said, “In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate.”
The Missouri legislature continues to choose for you, how your dollars will be spent.
Stay tuned for further updates on SB3, the Missouri Stadium Subsidy Bill.
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