After watching Burt Folsom talk about how the United States migrated from a free enterprise to a politically funded market for technological advancement, I learned a few interesting facts I had never heard before. First, I have never realized that there was a point in United States history where we as a free market had paid off our national debt fully to the point that we actually had surpluses of money at the end of a fiscal year. What I find most interesting is the fake congress had become twisted by the idea of competing economically and technologically with a country that had existed for centuries longer than we had been a unified country. While I do not find it surprising that politicians slowly became greedy to the idea of increasing their overreaching power over the general public, I do find it interesting that they in a way were conned/supported the development of a monopoly under Edward Collins. Since Collins had presented the idea of spearheading the development of the steamship industry for the United States and the United States Congress had been looking for a way to control the markets in America, the naively allowed a sole person to become a millionaire possibly even billionaire through the use of tax dollars. I would deem this as the gateway opening for the idea of monopolizing industries in the United States to emerge along with the idea that through proper wording some could receive aid from the government. After Collins stated that he would only hold this position of monopoly for one year in order to begin the industry, congress knowingly allowed him to further extend his length of "dictatorship" of the steamship industry. A few years later an opportunity emerged that would have allowed the United States to correct this incident, by instead splitting the $700,000 that Collins requested between Collins and Vanderbilt, they refused and instead continued to solely fund Collins. I believe this is possibly due to the idea that if they were to upset Collins, he could quite easily uproot his steamship operation, that they funded, and move his business to a competitor country. This started the idea of Big Business having a hold over the voting system and congress because they were fearful of the possibility of completely crashing the economy if they did not continue to support Collins. By allowing Collins to continue being the sole government-funded steam company they also removed all of his possible competition allowing him to potentially charge extremely high prices removing the general public and small businesses' option of an alternative steam company. I wholeheartedly believe this was the beginning of Big Business having the power and money to threaten the government to continue to fund them with fears that if they do not comply the United States would fall.