Even the Very Most Independent Business Didn't Build The Roads

Apparently, some prominent speaker at the Republican National Convention this week will be a businesswoman named Sher Valenzuela. As this Daily Kos article points out, her business has received a whole effing lot of government loans and government contracts, etc. That's all very well and good for liberals looking to poke fun at Republicans' efforts to criticize Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks, by pretending he meant something completely unconnected to what he actually said. But I'd like to point out that all of this explicit government support for this business is irrelevant to how applicable Obama's actual statement is. After all, the "that" in "you didn't built that" isn't your own business. If it were, then things like the Daily Kos article might well point out that, well, yes, the government had a substantial hand in building this business. But in reality, as opposed to Republicanland, Obama meant society at large, acting through the government, is responsible for the environment of physical infrastructure, a stable legal order, etc. that's necessary for a thriving capitalistic society and necessary for any small business to succeed. You, the small business owner, didn't built that infrastructure.

Note that this is true even for the hypothetical company that's never taken a dime in explicit government support. It didn't create the whole setting of a stable, developed capitalist society that has allowed it to prosper. So all of the Small Business Administration loans taken out by Ms. Valenzuela's business are irrelevant. She didn't built that, not in the sense Obama clearly meant, and she wouldn't have built it even if those loans and contracts had never happened.