Competition versus the American Way

摘要

American lore has it that competition is the best way to create new technologies and to produce the best products at the lowest prices. Our behavior tells a different story. We claim to support competition while enabling, and even encouraging, monopolies. We fight to cut in half the relatively small amounts of government money used to support the emergence of a competitive commercial launch industry, in order to add the funds to a giant government-run rocket. While greatly delaying the commercial projects, the transferred funds are too small to make any meaningful difference to the NASA rocket's schedule.