You didn't make that

I’d dearly love to take the time to write a blog post about what the president just said, but I’m too busy writing novels. I’d really like to know who was supposed to be writing all of these novels for me, because they are totally slacking on the job. I hope to get a blog post up about his stupid comments this week, but in the meantime, some of my friends get it:

Rob Allen

Marko Kloos

An interview with me that I can't remember if I posted or not.
The Burning Throne, Episode 36: Magatsu at the All Mother

49 thoughts on “You didn't make that”

    1. I think that his “hard work” and “smarter” comments were Freudian slips. Even though he’s the worlds largest narcissist, by now he must have encountered people who are truly smart and hardworking. Bibi from Israel, for instance.

      I believe he was subconsciously trying to self justify his own lack of smarts and hard work relating to his own considerable unearned success.

      We do have to admit, HE certainly didn’t do anything to merit his own success.

      1. But he has an exemption – his mentor whatshisface Davis taught him this philosophy. The POTUS would make Plekhanov, Ulyanov, Dzhugashvili, and Bronshtein proud.

  1. I thought that the internet was started as a decenteralized communications system in case of nuclear war. Commerce was not the reason it was developed.

    1. As with many projects of military/governmental origin, that was only the kernel of the idea. Much like the original computers were primarily for code breaking. And rockets were primarily for dropping bombs on the enemy. And ballooning was for artillery spotting. Many ideas like this get implemented, grow, wither and die inside the military sphere.

      Every once in a while, a idea with a potential for a military advantage breaks loose and its non-military potential is realized. The original ARPAnet started being implemented as an inter-university communication system primarily because the researchers that made the ARPAnet work were in academia and they needed their test bed. As open standards were developed in academia and the burgeoning commercial implementors that actually had to string the wires and run the long haul modems, they overtook the proprietary network standards and obsoleted them. This happened specifically because, while the open standards weren’t-invented-here, at least they weren’t-invented-by-those-bastards, and so everyone could agree upon them without losing face.

      Eventually those test-beds and academic try-outs were noticed by industry, and in no small part by people leaving academia and going into industry. And eventually this got noticed by people outside the circle that though dial-up BBSes were cool, but doing the same thing through this “in-tar-nets” would be cooler. The next thing you know we have Compuserve, then AOL, then mom-n-pop dial-up ISPs, and NCSA Mosaic, and Netscape, and Trumpet Winsock, then Internet Explorer (with a BSD TCP stack), and Richocet wireless modems, and a dot Com bubble, and a dot Com crash, and Mozilla and Flash and Quicktime and … and … and…

      All because a military idea was actually a bigger idea constrained by narrower minds. When it breaks loose, we call that our “peace dividend”.

  2. I think you have to submit to the Bureau of Typesetters, Bookbinders and Illuminators your application for novelist status in triplicate first, then wait 6-8 years (plus all mandated breaks, extended leave and sabbaticals) for the Scribes and Liberal Artists Union to hammer out a rough-draft to be vetted by the Commission on Race, Gender and Social Equality in Fiction (a division of the EPA of all things). After it passes standards, you’ll have the finished product in just a short decade, ready to earn you 1/10 of a cent per copy sold after all relevant fees, fines and union dues -and you only have to pay 75% of those royalties back as taxes each year.

    ….wait a minute.

  3. I use the website as my browser’s default page. It’s the online version of a radio segment on the local NPR station (don’t laugh) that does short, 1-3 minute vignettes of some historical figure, invention, battle, movement, or period of time. The guy who runs it is a history professor at Richmond University, and overall it’s not bad. They do a pretty decent job of not revising history, despite their venue. He’s no Minimum Wage Historian (I cannot thank you enough for pointing me to that one, Larry!), but he’s not half bad.

    Today’s episode? None other than the Wright Brothers. Kudos, AMIT – I had not expected you guys to roll out such a timely history lesson. Their write-up even contrasts the Wrights’ independent and well-hidden efforts to those of Samuel Langley, who was the head of the Smithsonian at the time and apparently had a side job as being the Solyndra of his day. Langley’s efforts toward powered, heavier-than-air flight – and the government research grants he used – pretty much universally crashed into the Potomac river. The Wrights, on the other hand, took great pains to make sure their work was independent of any outside interference.

    But I’m sure Mr. Obama would be more than happy to correct my view with how the Wrights could only have done what they did by exploiting a working class and taking advantage of infrastructure like electricity, interstate highways, the internet – you know, all the advantages they had back in 1903.

  4. Funny. The people who’re supposed to be writing my novels are slacking, too. Sheesh. Well, I guess I’ll just have to do it myself… Oh wait, are people even allowed to do stuff for themselves anymore?

  5. Hey, you didn’t write those novels all by yourself! You had a computer built by other people, an’ people who strung electrical wires and kept the generators running and built the whole thing– And all that money you made from those books? Well, sir, you didn’t make that all by yourself– you had a whole village at Baen, helping you out! And besides, you didn’t make yourself–you had help from a mother and father! And all that writing–it comes from government schools, you know, and….. Nope, I just can’t keep up the class warfare nonsense anymore. The scary thing isn’t that Obama seems to truly believe what he says, but that so many others follow the implications. Eeek…

  6. Every time he opens his mouth it is another statement demonizing those who have more and trying to turn the masses against them. I swear it sounds like the crap that came out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

    I work for a company doing machining in Switzerland. Several years ago our main raw material supplier for brass rod (Swiaametal Boillat) had a strike. The employees TOOK THE MANAGEMENT HOSTAGE and some of the local press supported this because they stated the employees own the business because they work there and the business could not function without them. That is EXACTLY what Obama is going for but he cannot be that bold yet.

    By the way, Swissmetal is now barely afloat and while they once had a commanding majority of all precision copper alloy business in Switzerland they have lost most of that to competitors whose employees do not shut down their plants and take their managers hostage.

    Nothing is free except air, although technically with Obacare I now need to pay a tax simply to breathe.

  7. You didn’t do that. WE did it by reading your books! /sarc /barf

    The sad part isn’t that Obama said it. He is a commie, pure and simple. It is what you would expect him to say.

    The sad part are the ab-humans that cheered this remark, and the ones that voted for him in the first place.

  8. I am disappointed that you said that. I love your books, Larry, and I have even introduced them to my Dad, who also loves them. But while you certainly did all the work necessary to write your books, what you didn’t do was to create an audience of readers who would buy your books. While individuals enjoy their own past-times, reading is taught in schools – a government program. Your copyright is protected by laws – is it fair to call it a regulation that prohibits others from profiting from your work by calling it their own? The roads I drive on to get to the bookstore – thank you state government, and the municipal snow plows. No one loves to pay taxes, but what I do love is civilization, which is a tool humanity uses to survive to raise our children, and the cost of that is taxes. I don’t love rules that tell me what to do, but I certainly appreciate the absence of (well, reduction really) of pollution in the air I breathe or poisons in my water. I appreciate the general sense of safety that I have going about my daily life and that is partly thanks to laws and police officers and firefighters, but is also due to a generally law abiding populace, who also feel safe enough to contribute to the well-being of society as a whole. This is our civilization and no single person built it.

    1. I must have missed the part where I said that I hate civilization…

      You know, I’m seeing a lot of apologists for Obama around the internet, explaining what he REALLY meant. You would think that since he is supposed to be the Great Communicator that Heals All Divides, he would be able to convey something so simple and agreeable without sounding like a collectivist, socialist, douchebag.

      No, sorry Sharon. I do enjoy the fruits of civilization and I do like living in a society with electricity, but society didn’t build anybody’s business and society doesn’t get the gold medal when an athlete runs fast. Individual achievers create more because they are in a better environment, but they are going to create, no matter what. There are business creators in the crappiest hell holes on earth and the lousiest countries in human history spawned great men who made them better.

      Obama is a collectivist. You can try to spin this to be something it isn’t, and he totally wasn’t waging class warfare, but if he is really so big on appreciating our forefathers, when was the last time he said something nice about them?

    2. The missing part from Obama’s little off the record gaffe (he didn’t have a telelprompter telling him to shut up) is that there is RISK that is NOT shared by the totality of society.

      When Larry decided to quit his day job and become a writer full time, YOU did not share in the risk that Monster Hunter: Saskatchewan would be a total failure. Doesn’t matter how many roads were built or how many kids got educations (by the way, you do know that there are other, non public, schools right? And that private and homeschooled kids generally perform better right?), how many police are patrolling the hood, if Larry fails to capture the audience’s imagination with a story about a monster who steals milk in bags, then only Larry suffers.

      Is he standing on the back of a giant? Sure, and when he falls off, it’s *him* who hits the ground.

      1. And downtown merchants who have the state vacate roads in their downtown districts, and privately handle road maint, can trespass stumblebums and occupy protesters for peeing on their doorstep … and damned good reason to roll back state ownership of roads in downtown core areas.

    3. This society is great because members in it trust each other to respect the rights of others, especially property rights.

      I suggest you read John Ringo’s book, The Last Centurion.

      Tribal societies have no trust in them … if you loan a lawn mower to a tribal who is not your relative, you will not get it back, unless you go to a cop. If they police find it, it will be worn up and useless, and your neighbor will smirk at you for loaning it.

      But because of that lack of trust, tribal societies completely fall apart into paleolithic savagery when they are hit by disasters … they have absolutely no resilience, unlike a trust based civilization.

      Obama is introducing socialism, which attacks private property, the foundation for all trust based civilizations.

      If you want to turn the USA into just another third world tribal shithole, Sharon, then allowing this fucking retard of a clown* in the Whitehouse to attack property rights is the fast track to getting there.

      *( and I apologize for insulting clowns )

    4. Sorry, that is incorrect. The government has no money. it uses taxpayer money to fund infrastructure and everything it manages.

      That tax money comes from the same people who use those roads and services. Think of them as pre-paid. They took the money from us, built a road because we told them we wanted roads to get from here to there for both personal and business reasons. They continue to use taxes from us to maintain that infrastructure. so really, we are the ones who demanded they build the roads, they responded by taking our money and contracting (in most cases) to private businesses to have those roads built. This president is trying to take credit for things the government does not deserve credit for.

      Also, as others have stated, the government did not invent the internet for commerce purposes. that is just stupidity at it’s worst.

      Public education? ever heard of private schools? many many private schools in this country that operate on public donations and tuition costs.

      Sorry, govt does not educate everyone. only those so unfortunate as to be able to get a better education at a prive school. (mind you, I say that as someone from a public school background who knows how the gov’t tries to use public schools to re-write history and toss rhetoric and propagandize new sheep.)

      Everyone benefits from living among others. WE are motivated by each other, inspired by each other, provide experiences with and for each other, etc…

      However it takes the person willing to accept risk and to take the steps using all they have learned and experienced and put that into action to build a successful business. Not everyone can do that as the small business administration statistics will tell you.

      My small business is successful because if the decisions I make, the initiative I take and the effort I put in to it. No one else did that but me.

      In regard to infrastructure and services, I paid for that and I continue to pay for that in my gas taxes, vehicle registration fees and taxes, sales taxes, AND my income taxes. Those services are bought and paid for up front in the money they spend that they get from us.

      The govt owes us all it provides because it takes from us to make them happen.

  9. You know, I have sneaking suspicion that those who are so grateful to the government for things like schools, roads, utilities, etc. are the same folks to don’t pay enough taxes to understand that the ONLY reason the government can provide anything is because lots of other INDIVIDUAL someones did something productive, and the gov’t takes an (increasingly large) cut of that productivity – all in the name of progress.

    Government services are bought and paid for by each taxpayer (not necessarily each citizen) – for damn sure they’re not gifts from On High or The Won, contrary to the thinking and behavior of so many of our fellow citizens. And of course, it’s the same people who think that additional ‘gifts’ can be had for all simply by voting for those who promise them.

    I don’t know who originally said it, but maybe the problem with America today is that we have too many safety nets – and a significantly large percentage of the population (legal and illegal, yes illegal damn it, not undocumented) is using them as hammocks. And they can vote, too!

    I wonder how the voting results might change if we tied voter registration to income tax forms – you get to vote when you PAY your taxes (and NOT get them all refunded back). Essentially, you don’t get a say on our strategy for the future until you have a dog in this fight.

    The left would certainly call it a poll tax, but it’s better than where we’re headed now – those who CAN’T produce are literally robbing those who CAN via the ballot box. So what’s going to happen when those who can be productive quit producing because the hammock-squatters (via the government) have made productivity impossible by squashing individual rights and productivity by way of taxes and collectivism?

    Ask Greece. Or France. Or most of Europe that isn’t England and Germany (though they’re not far behind).

    Comrade Obama’s still gonna get votes this November, from everyone who likes the idea of stealing from others simply by voting for the guy who says he’ll do it for them, and from those who still think that the Obamamessiah still farts rainbows, craps gold and grants wishes.

    I think my dislike of supporters of The Won has just grown to outright hatred. Anyone too stupid or ignorant to realize this socialist/communist/collectivist experiment didn’t work in Russia, or China, or a crap ton of other places in the last century needs a remedial 8th grade history class and their high school diploma revoked.

    Stop f*#king up my country! My family LEFT Asia to get AWAY from this shit! You wanna live somewhere where the government provides everything, well, that’s what the rest of the world is for!

    Sorry for venting on your blog Larry, but The Dear Reader and his supporters are pissing me off even worse than they did in 2008 – and that’s saying something. And as long as you keep writing, I’ll keep buying – multiple copies when I can. At least someone’s still producing…

    1. Here’s a little something else to make the steam come out your ears.

      Remember the
      BP oil spill? Remember how long it took the
      Oval Office to act? The first day or so, the
      Netherlands offered the equipment to contain
      The spill. The Oval Office refused to suspend
      The Jones Act on so called environmental
      grounds. Why did it take until 27 May for
      Maine to be asked to send its spill contain-
      ment equipment (Oh, FEMA, where art Thou?)
      Let’s talk about how he proposed Israel
      return to its 1967 borders. If you look at a
      map, the President is telling that country
      to commit suicide. Let’s talk about what
      our President wants to do with the military
      retirement system. He wants 401K type
      pensions, becoming payable at 60-65 yrs.
      More Solyndras are on the horizon. Without greater energy
      self-sufficiency, we’ll become more like the failing European
      We were told don’t read the health care law. Just pass it so we’d
      know what was in it.
      I know of a small medical practice with a lab attached that will
      shortly layoff RNs because the promised medical insurance costs
      reduction actually rose 25% for 2K12/2K13.

    2. Matt, that would be interesting but I would say in the defense of many people who have taxes taken out of their paycheck only to have them refunded later. The gov’t is using them like a worn out pair of shoes and is making money on that money that gets taken out of every paycheck in the form of interest.

      The politicians are to blame for too much money being refunded, it’s not like the avg Joe had a direct voice in the matter. So I would not say all people who get their taxes back are not trying to pay their taxes, they are just stuck in the games the politicians have created.

  10. Larry,

    Based in Obama’s logic, for your writing to use a well know analogy, you would be the Navy Seals, he and the govt would be providing command and control and doing the real hard work (‘doing it’), and we the readers would be Bin…hey, wait a minute…uh….ok, if you are the doctor, and the govt is the death panel, and…dang it…this is getting complicated…


  11. It’s a bit like telling a master chef “you didn’t make that” because they didn’t lay the eggs, cast the frying pan, grow the spices, build the stove, or butcher the meat.

  12. I see you’re jumping on the hate bandwagon by quoting the president out of context, while conveniently ignoring the sentences before and after the now infamous quote. Out of context, the president looks like an asshole. In context though, it is clear that the “that” refers to infrastructure such as roads, bridges, education, and the internet that enable business owners to create a successful operation.

    Furthermore, if you read Romney’s response where he criticizes the president, Romney actually agrees with him:


    From both quotes it is easy to see that both Obama and Romney agree that a lot of outside factors help business owners, but in the end, it is your initiative that creates your business.

    I guess it’s easier to take the quote out of context though.

    Here’s Obama’s full quote:




    1. collectivism is false

      We funded the GI Bill Because politicians thought it was a good idea to avoid having another fiasco like McArthur and Eisenhower using tanks to put down another Bonus Army. It was a bribe to put up standardized benifits. The Middle Class arose out of the skilled labor and merchant classes of the mid 19th through the middle end of the 20th century as we transitioned from an agrarian society to a skill based society. The Middle Class has Fallen through failure to educate themselves as the transition to a knowledge based economy. The Golden Gate bridge was built on a Profit basis and because it was NEEDED by the city of San Francisco. AND WAS PAID FOR by the CITY of San Francisco (not a federal funded project YAY for small Government) The Hover Damn was a WPA project funded out of need and turned over to private industry for a PROFIT.

      Your collectivist revision of history is simply not true. Committees rarely make history in a good way. Individuals make history not communes.

    2. Yes, let’s take it in context. Excellent idea.

      How about the paragraph immediately preceding the part that has us most incensed?


      Never mind the fact that the current party line is that Mr. Clinton is becoming senile for disagreeing with Mr. Obama’s stance on the Bush tax cuts, or that the trillion dollar spending cut figure is at best questionable, or the fact that billions of the growth of the Clinton years was wiped out in the tech crash of 2000. No, let’s look at that critical bit: asking the wealthy to pay a little bit more.

      If all Mr. Obama were trying to say was that no man is an island, well, we knew that already, and I don’t know of anyone who was saying otherwise to the degree that he implies. The fact that this wealth-redistribution stuff occurs immediately before the “you didn’t build that” segment illuminates the complete thought:

      That if you got wealthy through something that is not your own doing, then that wealth had to come from somewhere. No business occurs in a vacuum, so that wealth could only have come from the efforts of all the little people who work for you and buy your products. That suggests that they did the actual work, but you walked away with the credit – and the cash. Cash that rightfully belongs to them.

      If only there were someone in power who understood the plight of those smart, hardworking poor people, who could take that wealth from those greedy rich people and give it to those who truly deserve it!

      Now, this is of course a complete load. Here’s an extended example: It’s like saying a really stellar salesman doesn’t deserve any bonus for doing a better job than any of his coworkers, because really, it’s that salesman’s customers that did all the heavy lifting. They are, after all, the ones who bought the products, and most of them were probably in the market to buy something anyway; that salesman just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Actually, why pay the guy at all? The stuff he sold didn’t even belong to him. After all, he was selling company merchandise from company offices. Sounds to me like someone else laid out an awful lot of resources and infrastructure so that salesman could do his bit right at the very end.

      And here’s where the first aspect of this redistribution goofiness starts to break down. Did the company really ‘own’ that merchandise? Much of it was probably bought on credit, and they almost certainly didn’t make it in-house, so the factory that made the merchandise should have a claim to the sales profits, right? Ah, but the factory didn’t make it – the workers there did. Wait, wait, those workers didn’t grow, process, mine, refine, or develop the raw materials.

      This is a lot of people to please, and this theory of active management is getting out of hand! If only there were some system to sort out fair payments for services rendered and goods delivered! Perhaps through some agreed-upon medium of exchange where both parties decide on mutually acceptable terms. That sounds fair, right?

      Oh, wait – we already have those. They’re called the free market and the money system. So what was Mr. Obama’s point again? Oh, right – how that system totally sucks wind compared to actively micromanaging every transaction between every citizen ever. How silly of me.

      There is another colossal flaw in his argument, most notably who bears the risks of starting a business (hint: it’s not the employees). But that is a debate for another day, as this is already a wall of text.

    3. With context, that roughly translates as “Because somebody else built the tools, you didn’t build that birdhouse.”
      Sorry. He’s still scum.

  13. I’m on the toilet right now. I was going to wipe my ass, but I think I’ll just sit here and see how long it takes Obama to take care of that for me.

  14. Shit. A stroll around the internet shows people about to take it to the streets over a throwaway campaign speech gaffe from a dude already evaluated to be a fuckup. I just want to see the heads explode when he really does some shit. I’ve got the popcorn on standby.

    1. Again Major,

      Vannevar Bush,Ted Nelson and Tim Berners-Lee, A few pure researchers looking for a better way to access data developed it.

      Darpa put up the money to militarize it and combined it with their computer networks.

      Individuals develop and innovate not committees.

    2. Actually, DARPA impeded progress.

      A bunch of university UNIX geeks cooked up TCP/IP because they needed something right now, not something DARPA and Xerox might cook up any day now.

      So a bunch of them put up a proposed standard and issued a request for comments ( which became the absolute standard for doing any new internet standards ), and hammered out something that worked.

      DARPA and a bunch of big name dataprocessing companies spent years in committees working on a networking protocol that would not offend all of the vested money interests at the table. When they finally released it in the Seventies, it was universally ignored, even by government agencies and the military.

      1. Interesting spin, but I did my research and although the information is essentially correct, DARPA laid the ground work for the internet although ARPANET was a precursor. Essentially what you are saying in your last paragraph is Babbages’s difference engine fell into the same category as the spin you put on DARPA.

    3. Says the man using a personal computer (private company created and built) with a keyboard and mouse (private company) using either cable or dialup (private companies again, given the telco’s quasi monopoly granted by the government, but the technology was created not by the government) powered by a modern OS (private company created) through an ISP (private) to access Larry’s blog (hosted by, you guessed it, a private company) utilizing a modem (tech developed by Hayes, privately). You can Google all that for more information. Google, if you didn’t know, is a private company.

      Obama sets up a straw man of suggesting that conservatives hold to some ridiculous notion that everyone successful did so by his own bootstraps as a complete and independent entity, an island to and of himself. Obama then proceeds to attack said straw man by saying the ridiculous notion is ridiculous.

      1. Exactly. The “context” of Mr. Obama’s comments given by his defenders seems to boil down to some sort of bizarre statement that no one formed matter ex nihilo to make things just for the heck of it, and being able to sell said products is simply a fortunate and completely unplanned side effect. I’m actually kind of intrigued now; I had no idea Mr. Obama had regular contact with Dr. Manhattan.

        Mr. Obama’s apologists still have yet to mention anything about A) the fact that all services, materials, and infrastructure that entrepreneurs use is paid for by those entrepreneurs to at least the same degree as the general taxpaying public, B) that the general public does not share the risks borne by entrepreneurs when starting a business, C) that “putting it in context” means including the wealth-redistribution goofiness that came mere seconds before the “you didn’t make that” comment, or D)do we owe thanks and praise to the people who showed us what NOT to do by being terrible examples?

        An example, with profuse apologies to Hida-sama and his transcriber, Mr. Larry Correia:
        “Thanks, Dad, for deserting your post and displaying cowardice in the face of the enemy. Without your dramatic example of what NOT to do, I’d never have had to push myself nearly so hard to secure a position with the Paper Lanterns, learn to lead men from the front and live, or work so diligently toward marrying into the Otomo family. If you hadn’t screwed up so hilariously badly, I’d never have amounted to anything at all!”

  15. IF I’m not doing this myself the why the hell am I so tired at the end of the day and where are all those slackers hiding? The only time my partner Uncle Sam shows up is when I’m writing checks each quarter.

    Like they say, the difference between us and them is we WRITE the checks.. They CASH the checks..

    Off the the range for some anger management…

    1. Also, why are we even listening to a guy who has never started a business, owned a business, run a business, or for that matter even worked at a business in his adult life talk to us about what makes a business succeed?

      Anyone want to hear me blather on about what makes a successful microprocessor? Keep in mind I have only the most basic idea of what a microprocessor even is beyond the fact that is it small and processes stuff.

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