Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America

by Scott Adams

STRAIGHT-LINE PREDICTIONS Economists spend a lot of time trying to predict what will happen to people’s money if one or more variables in the world are tweaked. If you try to predict the future by assuming no variables ever change, you get predictions that look like these: “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty—a fad.” —The president of Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in Ford Motor Co., 19032 “The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most.” —IBM, to the eventual founders of Xerox, saying the photocopier had no market large enough to justify production, 19593 “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” —Ken Olsen, president, chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 19774 “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” —Irving Fisher, professor of economics, Yale University, 19295 “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” —Decca Records, rejecting the Beatles, 19626