“In their transformations, the governments of today’s industrialized countries took an active role, not only in protecting their industries through tariffs, but also in promoting new technologies. In the United States, the first telegraph line was financed by the federal government in 1842, and the burst of productivity in agriculture that provided the basis of industrialization rested on the government’s research, teaching, and extension services.”

-Joseph E. Stiglitz, from his introduction to The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi