"Some people say, why bother with all these plans? Just let the highest bidder win. It's free trade!"
"I'm afraid that won't work." Song He smiled. "The Second Generation Teacher Bai is a humanoid robot approaching maturity. Its nature is completely different from that of conventional machinery, and completely different from that of ordinary commodities as well. Its status is more akin to water, electricity, roads, and communications networks; more akin to schools and hospitals; more akin to petroleum and communications. It concerns the national economy and people's livelihoods and profoundly affects the overall economy."
"If we let the highest bidder win and allow free trade, ordinary people won't get a thing. Giants like Chenghuang, with their immense cash reserves, could completely monopolize Teacher Bai's production, then easily replace almost all human employees with cheap Teacher Bais. That would undoubtedly be a disaster."
"Handing it over to state-owned and centrally administered enterprises is a good choice, as decades of infrastructure development have shown. If private companies were put in charge of building roads, places like the Yun-Gui Mountains still wouldn't have a few decent roads even after another hundred years. Tunnels and bridges would be out of the question, because there wouldn't be much profit in them. As for what to do about ordinary people living deep in the mountains having poor transportation, private companies wouldn't consider that at all."
"Communications and electricity are the same. Suppose there's a small village in some remote ravine whose residents mainly make a living by farming, with only a small number of users altogether. Traveling thousands of miles to provide electricity and network access would hardly recover the costs. Private companies wouldn't even give it a second glance. No electricity? Too bad. No internet? Too bad. If there's no money to be made,