I wouldn't even try to pretend to know the actual future of any proposed endeavor. But if we are ever going to get out of this fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, we simply must stop hostilly second guessing every notion the comes down the pike, whether it seems silly at first blush or not. Naysayers are a tiresome lot anyway!

In my own profession, for every one hundred ideas that come to consideration; maybe twenty actually get down to really serious development. Of those twenty, maybe three will be survive to be presented to management for final consideration, the rest ending up as dead ends. Of those three, if your lucky, one will be chosen - or not. But once it has survived the rigorous and brutal adversities of natural selection and ruthless engineering scrutiny, and has been finally decided upon - success usually follows somewhere down the line.

The great Thomas Edison tried 140 times to invent a viable electric light bulb, before success finally came. Suppose he, or his venture capitalists, had actually listened to all the naysayers. And they were legion - who the hell had even heard of such a thing anyhow. Suppose that a band of Sacramento Merchants (and the Federal Gov't) had ignored "Crazy Judah" because of the naysayers of the time. Fact is, these crazy impossible ideas came to reality. The naysayers were wrong.

Fact is, that slim as it might seem, a resurrection of the Monterey Branch has a considerably greater chance of success than did "Crazy" Judah's idea of a railroad over a high Sierra pass. Yet it happened, It's there, I rode on it just two weeks ago. I am typing this by electric light - on an electronic device even. Edison's failed electric light bulb experiments led us directly into the electronic age, where hundreds and thousands of unheard of thing are now taken as passe'. Yes, it happened, and happened again, and again - in spades; despite all the naysayers on every turn. It's still happening!

The vast majority have always been naysayers - and always will be. But a few will have vision. And only those with vision will ever improve our lives or ever accomplish great things. The Book of Proverbs says that "where there is no vision, the people perish." I've said it before: "No great thing was ever accomplished by listening to naysayers". No small things ever were, either!

If we are ever going to get out of this fine mess we've gotten ourselves into, we as a people simply must STOP nay-saying; So what if it turns out to be another dead end idea, such as one of Edison's failed experiments. Out of those failures came the electronic age. Our next great age will surely come out of today's failed notion. How - because it will spark a new idea in another visionary head somewhere - as long as it gets printed somewhere.

Naysayers are a tiresome lot anyway!

OPB