Saving Blacksmiths and Basket Weavers

When Henry Ford's production methods made the automobile affordable for everyone, the day of the horse was over. Unless you were a member of the Amish community, your buggy was put aside and you and the little lady packed a lunch, hopped into the Model T and went to the beach for a picnic.

I have never done research into the matter, but were there groups of congressmen attempting to save the blacksmith industry through federal funding? Were our political leaders stupid enough back then to attempt to prop up a useless product?

Well there are today. It appears that our government is undergoing a study (when are they not spending tax money doing a study?) in an effort to help save newspapers. Sales of newspapers have plummeted through the past decade, with many of the oldest papers having already gone under. The study will include aspects on how to revive our interest in newspapers as well as ways to raise funds to keep more from going under.

Let me save you a few million tax dollars-if that were an actual concern-and tell you the problem right now. People don't buy newspapers for a few reasons, but the main reason is because we no longer want our news in that archaic form.

We have always been a nation on the move, even from the very start. If there had been a desire to find a disorder for everything in life back then as there is today, our forefathers would have suffered from Restless Explorer Syndrome. Our feet barely got wet at Plymouth and Jamestown before we were pushing through the Appalachians and heading west.

That is still true today, only since there is no more land to take, we now gobble up technology. There is no need to go back to the moon or even Mars (yet) because our Final Frontier is being found in microchips. Go! Go! Go! has been replaced by Google! Google! Google! We Facebook and IM and text and newspapers are simply too darn slow for us. That format for information is dead.

It also doesn't help that journalists are the new used car salesman (or is it BP exec?). Ever since the days of Woodward and Bernstein, journalists have desired to become the person who helps bring down the corrupt, even if the story is inaccurate. News has always been about "scoops" and scoops sell papers, but the Watergate scandal gave journalists a new sense of power and popularity. They became the rock stars of their professions.

But how can a newspaper, which is essentially 12 hours old by the time you read it, compete with Twitter? It can't, and all the taxes and regulations won't be able to change that fact. Congress would do just as well to try to resuscitate the eight-track or disco.

Technology changes things. It shapes and re-shapes entire industries. The free market takes care of itself and the consumer determines which product is worthwhile through the process of purchasing that product. Music CDs are almost dead thanks to iPod, but how many of us would like to go back to the days of jogging with a Sony Walkman strapped to our waist? DVDs will soon be gone, along with Blue Ray, because we will be getting our movies streamed over the internet.

Leave iPads and internet media outlets alone. And with all of that free time, maybe you can do a study on why studies are useless. I mean, it's not like you have an economy to help or anything.