Originally Posted by
Yonak Hawkins
Remembering some history of US commerce may be helpful. Early in the history of railroads there were many companies with different ideas and different designs. Each company owned their own track and their own trains in their own area of operation. All had their own gauge (distance between rails) of track and railroad cars to fit on their track. This meant that trains could not leave their area. Any cargo that had to go further than the boundaries of one company's track had to be off-loaded and re-loaded on another train.
The US government stepped in and standardized track gauge to help commerce to flow more smoothly. This meant that most companies had to re-lay all their track and order all new engines and train cars. This is an example of tremendous waste due to unregulated free enterprise.