By Philip Drucker
What if I told you manufacturing jobs are never coming back to the United States? What if I told you in as little as five years-time there will be no more truck drivers? Note I didn't say trucks. We'll still have plenty of those on the road. But they will be driven remotely. What if I told you this is happening right now? What if I told you in roughly ten years-time Saudi Arabia will be out of the oil business? What if I told you there is someone alive right now on this planet and assuming Trump doesn't finish what he's started that will live to be 150 years old? Scared? Don't be.
What if I told you the next generation will look at the changes going on, some due or at least made worse to the catastrophic effects of the Trump years, and assuming we all live to see the end of the reign of King Trump (we will), see and seize the opportunity for change. Real change. The kind of change that can send a rocket to Mars, cure cancer and feed the world.
What if I told you we are going to get rid of the money changers, I mean big banks and more importantly big bankers who are not the least bit interested in sound investment strategy but gambling addicted dopamine junkies who get their fix by putting our hard-earned money on bigger, riskier and often fraudulent "investments" that in fact are nothing more than elaborate Ponzi schemes. Too big to fail. What a joke.
You don't think so? Then tell me, what sane society places any value on creating enormous mountains of debt, then buying it back, selling it again, trading for what in many ways amounts to wife swapping it (you never know whose keys you are going to get) for get this, bigger and better you guessed it, debt.
What if I told you capitalism is dead and it just doesn't know it yet? What if I told you the average American will understand the difference between socialism and communism? Democracy and despotism? A monarchy and a republic? That government is here to help. That Reagan's voodoo economics and supply-side mumbo jumbo was just that. That deficits do matter. That tariffs were fine in the 19th and maybe even 20th century? But today, a "trade war" cannot truly be won?
What if I told you Trump and his cronies would not get to revise history? That text books will have at least a chapter on the return of the "Dark Ages"? Where enlightenment was rejected in favor of rule by mass hysteria of the masses? Where people prized their stupidity as of equal value to society as the guiding light of our society? Where education and critical thinking was reduced to the level of hiding in the "weeds".
Where racism and eugenics made a comeback and took a seat around the table of legitimate scientific inquiry and relevant to future societal planning (that sounded scary, didn't it?).
In short, what if I told you the above is all true? Would you believe me? You should. Because it is.
I have always wondered why people call common sense common. In my experience, it certainly has been anything but. Example? Nuclear power.
In the 1970s America finally realized it was time to give oil the heave-ho. We could have gone green developing and utilizing technology that harvested and produced power from wind, sun, geothermal, algae, alcohol, hydrogen and sugar water. Safe, clean, and get this, unlimited virtually free power from nature. Can't put a meter on the sun now can ya? What did we choose to invest in? Nuclear power, or as I refer to it, power from hell.
Spent fuel rods so toxic they carry deadly radiation for 10,000 years? Not a problem they said. We'll find a method of safe disposal. They did. Several. Problem is none of them were "commercially feasible", meaning too expensive to employ as in profits would be cut if we need to clean-up our own poisonous messes.
This was and still is one of the lasting deleterious effects of so-called shareholder value. I question the word value for I see little to no value in exchanging the quality of our air and our water, our home, in return for a bigger quarterly dividend. ROI? Never mind what's in your wallet. What planet do you live on?
You see, nuclear power was not an investment in power at all. It was from the start an investment in fuel. Trading oil, another toxic fuel substance in exchange for another. The fact it was incredibly dangerous to your health was a plus. Let us dig it up, process it and sell it to you.
What if I told you that even as a teenager, I thought the right to electricity, to power was a Fundamental Right? That we all owned electricity and that it was in society's best interest to give to anyone and everyone who needed it, for free?
What if I told you this was not my idea? That is was Nikola Tesla (the man not the car) who proposed this scenario? And that Westinghouse and Edison blocked his plans to power the world because there was no profit in it? No advantage in powering the world? What's next, trading debt as if it had intrinsic value? Shareholder mentality will get you a ruling class, a very mean, vile and unwilling to learn from its mistakes one every time.
Why do I know all of this? My very first foray into political discord and discourse came in 1976. California Proposition 15, or if you please, the Californians for Nuclear Safeguards initiative made it to the ballot. At 17 years old, I was for it. I went walking door-to-door with my pamphlets. I thought it was a no brainer. It was, but in the wrong direction.
The few persons who listened had already decided they preferred the massive propaganda campaign put into motion by the get this and surprise, surprise, the nuclear industry. The initiative failed with common sense (there's that word again) going down the nuclear uranium enriched half-life drain with it.
Then, as if by a miracle, came the meltdown at Three Mile Island. Radiation in the air and all. People got scared and get this, started to think. Maybe nuclear was not the way to go. It wasn't and get this, I was right.
Did I mention to this day there is still no actual function, commercially viable way to dispose of spent fuel rods? Remember Fukushima? The rods were on the roof sitting in a pool of water waiting to be unsafely disposed of when the wave hit. The radioactive rods were washed away into the sea. Trace signs of radiation have shown up on the beaches in California.
What if I told you I am excited about the future? A future with no nuclear power on any material level as the Tomorrowland solution to all our energy problems? Oh, the French are still playing around with it, but we won't. Fuel rods and all. If you know what I mean and I'm sure you do.
Kids today are not only alright but well versed in ecology, the environment and green solutions. They won't make the same mistake those huffy, condescending, cigarette smoking, alcoholic, 1970s swinger adults made back in their day.
Actually, they probably will, and probably many, many more, but nuclear energy won't be one of them. I, for one, am loving it. My new power ranger generation, baby.
Namaste. Be that inner spark of life you have always wanted to be.
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