Single Payer

Single Payer

Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution

DAVID HARSANYI:

Sorry If You’re Offended, but Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution.

Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.

Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”

It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second-most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.

To be fair, socialists will tell any lie to gain power.

150Posted at 8:34 am by Stephen Green   

We Should Have Impeached Obama

It should have been Obama

Realities of 2nd Amendment

There's a few realities the liberal left need to recognize when it speaks of gun control, gun bans or a repeal of the 2nd Amendment:

The 2nd Amendment was not enacted to protect hunting, collecting, sport shooting or plinkin.
 It was enacted to protect a people who had just fought a revolution against a tyrannical government from another tyrannical government thereafter. 20th century history reeks of what happens to a compliant people when its government legally and forcefully disarms them.

The truth: you cannot victimize, terrorize or oppress someone who has the means to defend himself. 
If you take away the right and the means to defend yourself, you will become a victim - of opportunists, of criminals, of tyrants and anyone who wishes to impose their will upon you. Why? Because opportunists, criminals and tyrants don't act rationally and won't be so stupid as to surrender their arms.

If any right is repealed, it is gone for good, never to return. 
If you surrender the right to bear arms and it is enforced, you can be sure your right to free speech, to be free of unreasonable search and seizure and others will be eroded, and there won't be a damned thing you can do about it. What are you going to do, resist? Vote? Hah! Look, I don't know what we can do to stop all the gun violence, but disarming yourself and all around you in order to feel safe won't make you safer. Truth is, you'll be more vulnerable than ever. 

I'm not willing to live that way, are you?

Trump threatens the very scary Leftist God complex

JUNE 6, 2019 BY BOOKWORM 137 COMMENTS

Trump is the avatar of an American reformation, for he is destroying the dangerous Leftist edifice that has turned our constitutional government into a god.

Jacob Peter Gowy’s The Flight of Icarus(1635–1637)

A few quotations to begin. The first is from Charles Lipson, writing about Mueller’s sinking reputation (and I guarantee that my ellipses are honest):

Republicans add three more serious charges against Mueller. *** Another serious charge — deliberate distortion of evidence — comes from president’s former attorney, John Dowd. He has shown the Mueller report edited one of his phone calls to change its meaning. Dowd is apoplectic, calling the report a “fraud.” Others will join him if additional distortions, misrepresentations, and omissions are found.

The second is from Paul Sperry, who spoke to people caught in the cross hairs of Mueller’s investigation (and, again, my ellipses are honest):

Now that Mueller has ended his probe finding no election collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, 10 witnesses and targets of his sprawling, $35 million investigation agreed to speak with RealClearInvestigations because they are no longer in legal jeopardy. *** Their firsthand accounts pull back the curtain on the secret inner workings of the Mueller probe, revealing how the special counsel’s nearly two dozen prosecutors and 40 FBI agents used harshly aggressive tactics to pressure individuals to either cop to crimes or implicate others in felonies involving collusion. *** Almost all decried what they called Mueller’s “scorched earth” methods that affected their physical, mental and financial health. Most said they were forced to retain high-priced Washington lawyers to protect them from falling into “perjury traps” for alleged lying, which became the special counsel’s charge of last resort.

The third, and final quote, is from William Barr:

Sometimes people can convince themselves that what they’re doing is in the higher interest, the better good. They don’t realize that what they’re doing is really antithetical to the democratic system that we have. They start viewing themselves as the guardians of the people that are more informed and insensitive than everybody else. They can- in their own mind, they can have those kinds of motives. And sometimes they can look at evidence and facts through a biased prism that they themselves don’t realize.

I’ll add a tidbit of my own, something that’s purely anecdotal, so you’ll just have to take my word for it: In my many decades as a lawyer, I’ve faced off against a lot of opposing attorneys. Most were just doing their jobs, more or less aggressively or effectively. Some, though, were deliberately dishonest. As far as they were concerned, the rules did not apply to them. Without exception, these unethical lawyers graduated from Ivy League law schools in the years after 1984.

This is not to say that every Ivy League law graduate with whom I dealt was dishonest. In fact, the majority were honest and some were even good attorneys. It’s just to say that every unethical attorney with whom I dealt came out of the Ivy League. In this regard, I’d like to point out that Andrew Weissman, Mueller’s second in command, a man with a reputation as an attack dog, and the person apparently in charge of the way in which the investigation proceeded, graduated from Columbia Law School, probably around 1984 or not long after.

I always got the feeling that the unethical Ivy Leaguers with whom I dealt truly believed that laws were for little people. When they looked in the mirror, they saw themselves as superior beings, above the ordinary rules. In their own minds, their Ivy League credentials elevated them to demigod status. They were oblivious to the fact that it’s dangerous when men think of themselves as gods, no matter how minor the deity they feel themselves to be.

Robert Mueller may technically be a Republican (although I’d classify him as almost fanatically “Never Trump”), but the others on his team were all Democrats. I’m sure some of them would claim religious belief but I can’t escape the feeling that these Mueller-team Democrats, in common with all modern, hardcore Democrats, reserve their highest and greatest faith for government.

To the modern Progressive, government is the instrument that will perfect mankind and save the earth. Government is the repository of power, both beneficent and punitive.

Progressives aren’t entirely wrong about the god-like qualities government possesses. I’ve already noted its all-encompassing control, as well as it’s ability to giveth and taketh away. Government is also effectively immortal for, as Reagan memorably pointed out, “No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”

Moreover, socialism reveals that the god of government is as jealous as Allah, for you may never worship any entity more than you do the government itself. In openly socialist nations, religious worship is outlawed. In less openly socialist nations — that would be Europe and the Progressive wing of America — God is denigrated, ridiculed, and maligned. The whole gay marriage movement has proven to be nothing less than a sustained attack on Christianity, both at a doctrinal and a practical level.

But here’s the really important distinction between religious gods and the god of government: The traditional Gods, whether from the Bible, the Koran, the Hindu pantheon, or even Greek or Roman mythology, all exist outside of humankind.  Government, however, is different: In Soylent Green fashion, government is people!

The ugly truth, though, is that men make lousy gods. I cannot think of a single man who has set himself up as a god, from Icarus to Nero to Caligula to Hitler to Stalin to Mao to Pol Pot to the whole miserable Kim family, who hasn’t come to a terrible end and, except for Icarus, taken thousands, millions, or even tens of millions of people with him.

Men who believe themselves to be gods are unconstrained by any rules, most especially the golden rule. Actual religions always have some element of the golden rule in them; government does not. There is no morality in government, just power. That’s why, going back to the quotations that opened this post, you have lawyers at the highest level of American politics falsifying evidence; entrapping people; and telling themselves that they, no matter what they do, are acting in the highest and best interests of “good government.”

The Leftists who make up both the open state and the Deep State, who walk the halls of Congress and huddle in bureaucratic offices, have succumbed to self-worship and no longer feel themselves bound by the morality that constrains all of us “little people.” Were the Leftists to have their way, we would be entirely ruled, not just by one Nero, but by an army of them, all wrapped cozily in their self-deification, meting out harsh punishments to all who falter in their government worship. The very fate the Founders feared when they wrote their exquisite Constitution, one intended to constrain government power, would be visited upon us.

No wonder the Left hates Trump so much. He threatens their god head. Even as they call him a tyrant and dictator, he is slowly but surely reining in government. He’s smashing its altars, shrinking its doctrinal rules (i.e., regulations), and investigating a priesthood (i.e., government bureaucrats) that’s become dangerously corrupt. This is the American reformation, and all I can say is, “Thank God — the real God that is — for it.”

America’s Fabian revolution: Prelude to a Second American Revolution

JUNE 13, 2019 BY BOOKWORM 94 COMMENTS

We are in the 7th decade of a slo-mo socialist revolution in America, but there are signs it will be followed by a successful Second American Revolution.

One of my favorite books is Daddy-Long-Legs, an epistolary novel that Jean Webster wrote in 1912. The letter writer is Judy Abbott, a young woman who was raised in an orphanage but who ends up at a college much like Vassar (Webster’s own alma mater) thanks to an anonymous benefactor. The benefactor has only one request for Judy in exchange for her four years at an elite women’s college: She must send him letters describing her college experience. It’s a sweet book and stands the test of time very well.

Jean Webster herself was a very Progressive woman in the Woodrow Wilson mode. Indeed, true to the whole Wilson/Margaret Sanger political and social ethos in which she lived, her sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, another epistolary novel called Dear Enemy, Webster argues strongly in favor of eugenics. The book never mentions abortion, but it makes a vigorous case that “defectives” — alcoholics and people with family histories of insanity or just not being very bright — should not be allowed to breed. Poor Webster might have done better herself had she chosen not to breed, for she died in 1916 from childbirth fever.

But back to Daddy Long Legs…. At one point in the novel, Webster has her heroine announce that she is a revolutionary, but not the nasty violent kind. Instead, she is a nice revolutionary:

Dear Comrade,

Hooray! I’m a Fabian.

That’s a Socialist who’s willing to wait. We don’t want the social revolution to come to-morrow morning; it would be too upsetting. We want it to come very gradually in the distant future, when we shall all be prepared and able to sustain the shock. In the meantime we must be getting ready, by instituting industrial, educational and orphan asylum reforms.

Webster’s was a pithy and accurate definition of Fabian socialism.

Thinking about it, a Fabian revolution is precisely what we’ve seen taking place in America since the years after World War II. Other countries’ revolutions — or even America’s own 18th century revolution — have been violent, abrupt upheavals. Societal institutions resisted the revolutionary ideas until guns and blood effected a change.

In America, the middle class sought freedom from overweening government power and corruption. In France, the intellectual class sought to switch to itself the power that the monarch had long held. The same was true with the Russian revolution. In China, rather unusually, it was the workers and the students who overthrew, not just the corrupt government, but the intellectual class as well, a model Pol Pot followed in Cambodia. You can mentally page through other revolutions around the world and see that they’re bloody affairs. 

To date, though, our second American revolution has not been an abrupt, bloody, convulsion. Instead, it has been exactly what Judy Abbott envisioned: a revolution that came “very gradually,” with Leftists slowly but steadily working their way through every American institution. Sure, there’s been a bit of violence in the streets, both during the Vietnam and Iraq Wars and during the first two years of the Trump presidency, but it’s been street theater rather than the mass bloodshed and formal armed warfare that has attended past revolutions at home and abroad.

The real changes in America have been in colleges, in news media, in the entertainment world, in the publishing world, in high schools and elementary schools, and even in libraries, where men dressed up as women read to toddlers who, judging by pictures, appear both fascinated and horrified by the bizarre spectacles before them. Oh, and of course our corporations have also been moved to the Left by the Fabian revolution as college grads have successfully moved into mid- and upper-level managerial positions that were once held by people who weren’t educated in the Fabian socialist tradition. The social media and other tech giants are populated entirely by college grads or people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who were in college long enough to absorb its hard Left ethos.

I happen not to like this socialist revolution, soft though it’s been. My preferred theory is “that government is best which governs least.” As I tried to demonstrate in this old post supporting the Second Amendment, there is no killer in the world more cruel and efficient than government. No individual or corporation comes even close.

As the increased rationing of care in Britain shows, government does not love its citizens. Cradle to grave care works only as long as there’s some residual money left over from the free market system. Once that money’s gone, government almost gleefully decides who lives and who dies. Your family, meanwhile, is very likely to impoverish itself to keep you alive.

Government is also a miserable money manager — and you need look no further than Venezuela to see what I mean. Within less than twenty years, it went from one of the richest (the richest?) countries in Latin America to being a complete economic basket case, with people dying in barren hospitals and starving on the streets. That is, they’re starving and dying of disease when they’re not being gunned done by their own government.

I could go on but I think most people already have their minds made up about whether they want to live in a country defined by individual liberty or a country that’s a dystopian cross between the world’s worst Department of Motor Vehicles and an abattoir. I mentioned a few paragraphs ago that I want the world of individual liberty and have seen enough of world history, along with current news, to know that nothing worse can happen to a country’s citizens than to fall prey to socialism.

My understanding of socialism based on two centuries of real world examples is why I don’t think Bernie is a sweet, but gaga old man; I think he’s a genuinely evil tyrant wanna be. I have a few essays on the subject that I wrote in 2016, which you can find here. Given that Bernie is currently having a hard time staying to the left of the other whacked out Democrat Party clown-show candidates, I may have to update and revamp that blog to accommodate all the new, evil craziness coming down the pike.

Since I dread socialism, I look for hope. Today, I’ve seen one sparkling sign of hope and had one hopeful thought.

The sparkling sign of hope is the Oberlin verdict. It was wonderful when the jury awarded Gibson Bakery $11,000,000 in its lawsuit against Oberlin based upon Oberlin’s deliberate effort to destroy the fifth generation family bakery because the bakery dared to call out a student shoplifter (who then joined with two others to commit assault). Things went from wonderful to glorious when, today, the jury piled on another $22,000,000 in punitive damages.

My joy doesn’t arise merely because Oberlin deserves to be destroyed, which it does because it’s one of the most pernicious influencers in the Fabian revolution that surrounds us. It also comes from the fact that the verdict proves that there are still Americans who believe in the American way and who will take a stand against the Social Justice Warriors who are at the forefront of America’s Fabian revolution.

Speaking of the “forefront of America’s Fabian revolution,” that forefront, the Ground Zero of the revolution, is America’s colleges and universities or, as I call them, Americans institutions of higher indoctrination. It is these institutions that seed everything. If Fabian Socialism is an infected boil, spreading its toxins through every American institution, the colleges and universities are the pus lying at the center of that boil. Lance the boil and expel the pus . . . and you might have a chance to help the rest of the body recover. One way to lance the boil is to withhold every penny of federal funds, whether in the form of grants or student loans or anything else, from all colleges and universities. If they can’t survive in the free market, they deserve to go down.

But as so often, I digress. I wanted to get back to happy thoughts. The Oberlin verdict led me to another nice thought, the hopeful one I mentioned. You see, sooner or later, no matter how gradual and Fabian a revolution, revolutions will turn violent. Most revolutions are violent in the initial phases and, with the exception of the American revolution, they remain violent for decades and generations after. As Jesus presciently and wisely said, “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” There are purges and overthrows and more purges and mini-revolutions that are squashed and praetorian guards and it just goes from ugly to really ugly, with death always attendant on the revolutionaries and their progeny.

But slow-moving revolutions can turn violent too. Take the Muslim revolution in Europe. For several decades, Muslims have slowly been moving onto the Western European continent, whether as Turks in Germany, Algerians in France, or Pakistanis in England. Most were peaceful enough, although many were addicted to welfare. Now, though, they’ve reached critical mass in those countries, with help from the recent flood that Obama trigger and Merkel welcomed. This critical mass has seen violence become endemic in Europe and I predict that it will soon become epidemic. Then — poof! — no more Christian, Enlightenment Europe, and no more post-Enlightenment socialist-bureaucracy EU. Instead, it’s the Islamic Continent of Europe.

Slow, Fabian-style revolutions can also turn violent, not because of critical mass, but because the revolutionaries fear that victory is being snatched from their grasp. The perfect example is the mass hysteria following Trump’s election. For the Fabians, Bush was tolerable, although just barely. When Trump came along, Bush Derangement Syndrome looked like the common cold compared to the Black Death that is Trump Derangement Syndrome. Antifa went mad. Others went mad. Violence happened.

But here’s where the hope comes in: The socialist leaders in their incubators in America’s colleges and universities were so invested in the success of their Praetorian revolution than they never even considered that they might need a military branch. They haven’t trained fighters; they’ve trained snowflakes. The snowflakes periodically get screechy and vicious, and some will gather in dangerous mobs, as happened at Berkeley both when Milo and Ben Shapiro came to speak, but they’re not warriors. The vast majority have been trained for decades to fear guns and to run for help to the academic mentors when the going gets tough.

It’s the real Americans — the ones who believe in the Constitution, including the Second Amendment, and who believe in individual rights and self-reliance — who still know how to fight. I devoutly hope that the true Second American Revolution, the one that is a push-back against the socialist Fabian revolution that slowly occurred right before our un-heeding eyes, never needs to go outside the voting booths and courtrooms. However, if the Social Justice Warriors decide to continue their revolution on the streets, I’m pretty sure they’re going to lose quickly and efficiently.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds v Social Media

Glenn Harlan Reynolds v Social Media

Laurence Jarvik

Posted on June 18, 2019 14:58

    

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In his new Insta-Book SOCIAL MEDIA UPHEAVAL, University of Tennessee law professor, internet entrepreneur, webmaster, blogger, author, and pundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds has come forward to suggest a needed path to escape our current imprisonment in the Social Media Matrix.

When a Blogosphere pioneer takes on Corporate America in a 64-page broadside about the future of the internet titled Social Media Upheaval, it's time to pull up a ring-side seat and concentrate on the action.

One is left wondering why Instapundit, established to cover 9/11-related news and commentary in 2001, never became a mega-corporation like Facebook or the Huffington Post.

Perhaps Wall Street never really was a non-political marketplace in the first place. Maybe "investors" were subsidizing political operatives through financial manipulation, buying good PR for their cronies, while burying competitors through capital strikes, boycotts, gray lists or black lists?

Maybe legacy media chose "winners" based upon Old School Ties, and other pre-industrial connections such as ancestry, geography, ethnicity, and political loyalty.

Suppose Social Media and Social Networking were not the ultimate flowering of internet freedom, but rather an attempt by the Establishment to impose an iron cage of bureaucracy on the New Frontier of the World Wide Web?

Whether by accident or design, that is exactly what has taken place. 

Now comes Glenn Harlan Reynolds, University of Tennessee Law Professor, Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, blogger, author, and pundit to suggest a path to escape our current Matrix.

After an abridged history of the internet, in which Reynolds points out that regulation would only enhance the power of those Teddy Roosevelt called "malefactors of great wealth," he relies upon FDR's principle that “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob” to call for the breakup of social media monopolies under anti-trust law. 

Obviously Facebook didn't buy Instagram and What's App by chance, Google didn't buy YouTube to enhance competition, and so forth. Rather, Big Tech were engaged in a conscious conspiracy in restraint of trade--not only in economic trade, but also in cahoots with a political party that sought monopoly status in politics, restraining trade in the political marketplace as well as the financial one.

Indeed, should legal proceedings begin, one might find a "smoking gun" where financial and regulatory favors were provided as a quid pro quo for political activity--a corrupt bargain that might make Teapot Dome look like a tea-party, and 1950s Quiz Show and payola scandals look like a picnic.

Although Reynolds pulls his punches and refrains from doomsday scenarios, his conclusion is on-target and his recommendations should be followed by the Trump Administration with all deliberate speed:

"Antitrust scrutiny of monopolies and collusion will do more for the integrity of social media, and the protection of society from hysteria and misinformation, than regulation of content."

Such an antitrust effort would be comparable to the breakup of Bell Telephone in 1982 that resulted in the telecommunications revolution which produced the fax machine, mobile phones, and cheap long distance that contributed to the Reagan administration's economic boom.

Instead of "demonetizing" objectionable content, the Trump Administration could "demonetize" objectionable corporate CEOs -- like Jack Dorsey, Sundar Pichai, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mark Zuckerberg. 

Nordic Socialist Countries Moving Towards Private Healthcare

Nordic Socialist Countries Moving Towards Private Healthcare

Brittany's "PoppyP Eulogy

Every life has impact. More often than not, we underplay the value of an individual contribution to the overall expanse of humanity. What no single person can comprehend is the ripple effect of the difference someone makes on this earth. Our desire for purpose and acceptance often leads us to try to quantify what we contribute, but no matter the time and effort expended, we’ll never know this side of Heaven.

On Tuesday, my poppy, James Waddell, passed away. The resulting cascade of his 93 years is immeasurable. We could start by adding up his brothers and sisters (their husbands and wives), his children (their husbands and wives), his grandchildren (their husbands and wives), and then his great-grandchildren. But since that number, by my count, rings in around 94 we’re already talking about a good chunk of people. Then, consider that those conservatively estimated 94 people are quite literally all over the place affecting those around them, well, we begin to enter a mind blown situation.

A person’s life isn’t just the continuation of their DNA. There is a lasting imprint of experiences that far outweigh the fact there are a ton of loud laughing, teary-eyed, food loving, long-story-short telling, bear hugging Waddell’s out there. As a naval electrician in World War 2, he not only fought for freedom, he inspired two of his sons and a grandson to do the same. In northern Ohio following the war, he made sure things were powered for a number of other companies, including Penton Publishing and Fanny Farmers Candies. See where I’m going here? Not only has his legacy continuously contributed to our country, but books and years of tasty treats for Valentines, Easters baskets, and Christmas stockings. His life exemplified the fact that it isn’t about what we do, but giving whatever we do everything we've got.

Even beyond his occupation is his family. My poppy loved his family, even when our kids-these-days decisions drove him crazy. His love for his wife and kids set a pretty high standard for every man in our family – and it definitely made the ladies a bit more picky. I’ll never forget when I brought Jimmy to meet my family and my grandma told me, “I like him, but I have special fondness for Jimmy’s.” She certainly wasn’t the only one, we have quite a few. Perhaps the greatest example he set was how he loved each one of us uniquely. Sure, there was the occasional wrong name, but considering we have more than our share of men named Jim, Terry, and Chris, he was bound to get it right sooner or later.

Every time I visited there was apple juice in the fridge. While that was probably my grandma, there were also Bomb pops – in hind sight, those might have been his, but he always shared.😉 When I called, he talked to me about the weather. What amazed me was that he would ask about something that had happened weeks or months prior. He would even ask about Jimmy. Even if we weren’t around, he was watching and he cared – even about the ones he’d only had a little while.

For him there was something unique about every single one. And he made sure we knew he loved us and was proud of us. That’s a love just keeps on going – the kind that lets you know there’s a safe place to land. Grandma used to say, “We’re nuts, but there’s not a bad one in the bunch.” Love will do that. Raising nine children was no small task, but they are men and women, raising men and women, who are raising men and women to be humans that genuinely care. That not only love and cherish one another, but others.

In a world that constantly reminds us of the temporary nature of things, my Poppy’s legacy reminds me to slow down and pace myself. He wasn’t all the things every day, he was who he was daily and that’s what resulted in an impression that can’t ever be measured. Love you, Poppy.

The Future

Auto repair shops will go away.

A gasoline engine has 20,000 individual parts. An electrical motor has 20. 

Electric cars are sold with lifetime guarantees and are only repaired by 
dealers. It takes only 10 minutes to remove and replace an electric motor. 

Faulty electric motors are not repaired in the dealership but are sent to a 
regional repair shop that repairs them with robots. Your electric motor 
malfunction light goes on, so you drive up to what looks like a Jiffy-auto 
wash, and your car is towed through while you have a cup of coffee and out 
comes your car with a new electric motor! 

Gas stations will go away. Parking meters will be replaced by meters that dispense electricity.  Companies will install electrical recharging stations; in fact, they’ve already started. You can find them at select Dunkin Donuts locations.

Most (the smart) major auto manufacturers have already designated money to start building new plants that only build electric cars.

Coal 
industries will go away. Gasoline/oil companies will go away.  Drilling 
for oil will stop. So say goodbye to OPEC!

Homes 
will produce and store more electrical energy during the day and then they use and will sell it back to the grid. The grid stores it and dispenses it to industries that are high electricity users. Has anybody seen the Tesla roof?

A baby of today will only see personal cars in museums.

The FUTURE is approaching faster than most of us can handle. 

In 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. 
Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they went 
bankrupt. Who would have thought of that ever happening?

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next  5-10 years and, most people don't see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later, you would never take pictures on  film again? With today’s smart phones, who even has a camera these 
days?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had  10,000 pixels, but followed Moore's law.  So as with all exponential 
technologies, it was a disappointment for a time, before it became way 
superior and became mainstream in only a few short years.

It will now happen again (but much faster) with Artificial Intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and 
jobs.

Forget the book, “Future Shock”, welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution

Software has disrupted and will continue to disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years.

UBER is just a software tool, they don't own any cars, and are now  the 
biggest taxi company in the world!

Ask any taxi driver if they saw that coming.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties

Ask Hilton Hotels if they saw that coming.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. 

This year, a computer beat the best Go-player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the USA, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of  IBM's Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for right now, the basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans

 So, if you study law, stop immediately. There will be 90% fewer lawyers in the future, (what a thought!) only omniscient specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, its 4 times more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans. In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars are already here. In the next 2 years, the entire industry will start to be disrupted. You won't want to own a car anymore as you will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it you will only pay for the driven distance and you can be productive while driving. 

The very young children of today will never get a driver's license and will 
never own a car.

This will change our cities, because we will need 90-95% fewer cars. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide including distracted or drunk driving. We now have one accident every 60,000 miles; with autonomous driving that will drop to 1 accident in 6 million miles. 

That will save a million lives plus worldwide each year.

Most traditional car companies will doubtless become bankrupt. Traditional car companies will try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels. 

Look at what Volvo is doing right now; no more internal combustions engines in their vehicles starting this year with the 2019 models, using all electric or hybrid only, with the intent of phasing out hybrid models.

Many engineers from Volkswagen and Audi; are completely terrified of Tesla and so they should be. Look at all the companies offering allelectric vehicles. 

That was unheard of, only a few years ago.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because, without accidents, the costs will become cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move farther away to live in a more beautiful or affordable 
neighborhood.

Electric cars will become mainstream about 2030. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity.

Cities will have much cleaner air as well. (Can we start in Los Angeles, 
please?)

Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean. 

Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact. 

And it’s just getting ramped up.

Fossil energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that simply cannot continue - technology will take care of that strategy.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year. There are companies who will build a medical device (called the "Tricorder" from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it.  It then analyses 54 bio-markers that will identify nearly any Disease. There are dozens of phone apps out there right now for health purposes.

WELCOME TO TOMORROW – it actually arrived a few years ago.