Исторический анализ показывает, как финансовые интересы тормозили технологический прогресс в транспорте и промышленности

In England, in the early 1800’s, an enterprising person attached a Newcomb steam engine to a carriage, and invented the steam stagecoach. It was not only a rich man’s plaything, but also was used as a public conveyance, in direct competition with canal boats and horse drawn stagecoaches. Those two latter industries were well established, profitable, well understood, and did not welcome the competition. In a pattern we will see repeatedly, they took their money to Parliment, and had the first red flag laws passed. To quote one of them (Wikipedia): “One of such persons, while any locomotive is in motion, shall precede such locomotive on foot by not less than sixty yards, and shall carry a red flag constantly displayed, and shall warn the riders and drivers of horses of the approach of such locomotives, and shall signal the driver thereof when it shall be necessary to stop, and shall assist horses, and carriages drawn by horses, passing the same.” By smearing the new technology with a patina danger, (and presumably financial incentives), the horse and canal interests got Parliment to enact their desired law. Because of the extreme danger, the steam carriage could move no faster than a young child (read: expendable) could walk in front, loudly proclaiming the oncoming terror. The law had its immediate effect of eliminating steam carriages from competing with horse drawn stages and with canal boats. The second effect of the red flag laws was to ‘midwife’ the invention of the railroads. Railroads did not use the public roads. But while stagecoaches go back into antiquity, the canal was the original new, high technology mode of transportation in the early 1800’s. Their use began in England, spread across the continent, and eventually to the US. The Erie canal, from Albany on the Hudson river to Buffalo was one of our countries’ first great public works. Early canals used either ramps, or ‘weirs’, low dams a few feet high, where a horse could drag the canal boat upstream over the dam overflow. (Going downstream was, of course, more exciting but less of an effort.) And then the canal lock was invented. This allowed the water flow to be better controlled, since water “always flows downhill”. And that is the fundamental weakness of a canal. Every time you cycle a canal lock, weather going upstream or downstream, one point zero canal locks full of water flows downhill. So, the traffic along a canal is limited by how much water you can put into the canal at the highest point. The two remaining major canals still in operation today are the Panama Canal, and the Suez Canal. The first was built though a rainforest, but is already at its maximum capacity. The Suez Canal is at sea level along its entire length. And then along came the railroads. Railroads are not limited by locks and water flow. With good scheduling and control, you can line up train cars to the horizon, carrying vastly more traffic than any canal. The canals in the US fought back by denying permission to the railroads to either bridge over them, or to tunnel under them. The Erie Canal becomes a immense barrier, hundreds of miles long, and a railroad has to stay on one side or the other. That didn’t last long. The canals lost that battle, and that is a reason we have ’eminent domain’ laws. Now, economists refer to railroads as ‘natural monopolies’, meaning that to do legit capitalism a la Adam Smith, you would need multiple competing railroads. A ‘natural monopoly’ then is the natural justification for government regulation. Of course, there was none of this during the Gilded Age, where countless local railroads, e.g. Hicksville, Dinky City and Pacific, were merged to form the railroad giants we’ve all heard of. Farmers on the great plains had to deal with just one railroad to buy their crops and carry them to market. The ‘Granges’ were organizations of farmers who invested in grain silos, so they could decide when to sell. And the workers were not exactly treated well. The link and pin coupling system required a brakeman to stand between two cars as they backed together, slide the link into the pocket on the other car, secure it with the pin, and then jump free before he was crushed. A brakeman could continue employment as long as he had at least two fingers on each hand. They were called brakemen because their job was to scamper along the tops of the cars, and set or loose the brakes by hand, according to whistle signals from the engineer. In absolutely any weather at all. To fall between the cars was certain death, and there were no retirement or death benefits that went with the job. Or even a requirement for the railroad to recover the bodies… Its not like technology wasn’t addressing these needs. In 1868 George Westinghouse patented the air brake system for trains. Compressed air from the engine held the brakes off in every car, till the engineer’s action or a hose rupture caused the brakes to engage. A broken train would then automatically set the brakes, and immense safety advance. It was not used. In 1873 Janney (ex Confederate calvary officer) invented the ‘knuckle coupler’, which coupled and decoupled cars without needing a person in between. It was not used. Finally in 1893 Congress acted, after several horrific accidents and decades of unnecessary deaths. As a part of the massive reforms that ended the Gilded Age, he Safety Apparatus Act was passed. It finally forced the railroads nationwide to standardize guages and couplers, use airbrakes, and to adopt much needed technical improvements, which the railroads were ignoring. And if you remember from your Income Tax forms, there is a separate Railroad Retirement System (much predating Social Security) for reasons you can imagine from the above. The tally of resistance to technical advancement and public safety continued. In the early 1900’s, Patterson developed Tetra Ethyl Lead as an anti-knock compound for gasoline. He also offered it to the Army as nerve gas, but they said it was too dangerous. The dangers of lead were well known to science, since lead is a cumulative poison in the human body. Lead poisoning produces promiscuity, violence, and insanity. The word plumbing, for pipes, comes from the Latin plumb, for lead. Some have attributed the excesses of the Roman empire to mass lead poisoning. The Romans did use lead to plug the necks of their wine jugs. The total loss of the Franklin expedition to the Northwest Passage in 1846 was due to the (high tech!) use of lead to seal the first canned food. And since the banning of leaded gasoline, after a protracted battle, the crime rate in inner cities has decreased steadily, and is now much lower. Did the USA just duck the same disaster that took down the Romans? Of course, the automobile industry in the United States has been a technological leader… not. In the 1970’s, American auto CEO’s were referring to electronic ignition as a fad, and antilock brakes (first used on aircraft in 1929…) as something that would only ever be available on the most expensive models. And I don’t need to bring up the battles over smoking or climate change at this point. What history shows is that opposition to technological advancement and common sense is often fought by moneyed interests.