The Panama Canal and the Case for Government to Do Stuff

I've been reading David McCullough's book about the Panama Canal.  It's not a politically partisan book or anything, and I haven't been thinking about it in the context of today's political debate.  But now, toward the end of the book, he describes how some commentators of the time were critical of the Socialist nature of the enterprise.

The Panama Canal was started by a French consortium in the 1870s, funded by stock bought by investors both big and small.  It failed spectacularly for many reasons including poor decisions made by the main visionary who insisted on building a sea-level canal even though a lock canal was plainly required.  But even with better decisions, it seems that the task was just too big for the private sector to accomplish.

So the US government, driven by President Teddy Roosevelt, took it over and built the canal.  The enterprise could not have been more controlled by government- all the engineers and workers were employed directly by the US government, which built company housing, hospitals, social clubs, owned the railroad, and owned the steamship line that brought workers back and forth.  And it worked out pretty well.

This isn't an argument against Capitalism- it's just to make the point that some things can't be accomplished by private enterprise and sometimes the government is all that's left to do it.  Properly administered, governments are capable of great things like the building of the Panama Canal, which has benefited the world economy many times over.  So I don't want my government owning the auto companies, but then again in 2009 that industry was failing, and it required the government to bail the auto companies out- nobody else could do it.