Eddie Rickenbacker Quotes
Within the next few decades, autos will have folding wings that can be spread when on a straight stretch of road so that the machine can take to the air.
Rickenbacker, Edward V. Rickenbacker. Prentice-Hall, 1967.
Mother Shipton made a series of unusually accurate predictions, published throughout England, including the Great Plague of London, the Spanish Armada, & the Great Fire of London. Be wary of this particular quotation as while it may be a remarkable prediction, it also may well be a forgery.
What Mises says in this quotation is true. What he does not say that by the time the automobile was developed and then the airplane, the Railroad monopoly had impeded and destroyed so many different entities that the governments had cracked down and curtailed much of the ability of the Railroads to exercise monopolist power. If the Railroads had as much power in 1920 as they did in 1870, there probably never would have been a thriving auto industry and the airlines would likely never have succeeded. Mises again exaggerates a basic point that large monopolistic companies and industries often have not been able to stave off new technology and approaches. While true in many cases, the cause is not necessarily fundamental to economics but has sometimes (as with the railroads) been caused by Government regulation and reform. A better example is that the large sail dominated shipping industry was not able to stop the coal fired steam engine ships. Indeed the shipping owners embraced the new technology. The best examples of Mises point occurred after Mises died. For example, Microsoft was not able to prevent Google from dominating many of Microsoft’s positions in the IT world.
Actually both of these predictions came true in half the time estimated. This is a good illustration of how technological innovation and utilization was accelerating throughout the 20th century.
Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was an American fighter ace in World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient. With 26 aerial victories, he was the United States' most successful fighter ace in the war and is considered to have received the most awards for valor by an American during the war. He was also a race car driver and automotive designer, a government consultant in military matters and a pioneer in air transportation, particularly as the long-time head of Eastern Air Lines.
