Peter Saint-Andre made a post mentioning how the Erie Canal was built with government money and subsequently resulted in more wealth being created. This is causing him to question some of his "anarcho-capatilist" assumptions. A realization is missing in his post though, and I'll call this my business principle number one:

Biz Principle #1: If you're embarking on a huge project, you take whatever money you can get to finance the project.

Basically what that says is that if you want to say send a man to the moon, you get your funds from any person or entity that has pockets deep enough to see it through to completion. Your goal is the realization of the project, not some idealistic stance about where your money is coming from so long as you have it with as few strings attached as possible.

I sent PSA a little message after I read the post. I mentioned that he should watch HBO's Deadwood and watch a semi-fictional town organize. The episode that was on today, "Requiem for a Gleet", had a quote that some how seems completely appropriate to this post:

If money had to be clean before it was recirculated we'd still be living in caves.