What Other Jobs/Industries Should Go?

The Price of Liberty has an interesting piece today by Chuck Muth. Titled Candle-makers, Blacksmiths...and the Post Office, Muth makes a good case for doing away with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS). You read that right -- doing away with it, not just privatizing it. Read his commentary if you want the details; I want to focus on something different this morning.

Muth's essay got me to thinking: what other jobs and/or industries can, and probably should, fade away as progress renders them inefficient (at best)? The music monopoly, otherwise known as the RIAA and its member recording labels, is an obvious one, as electronic file sharing and CD/DVD burning technologies render its stranglehold on music distribution superfluous. The internet is similarly making it challenging for the big publishing companies to retain their dominance on the written word (especially if you include e-texts as part of the "written" word).

What about landline phone service? Between cell phones and VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) technology, old-fashioned phones could disappear in many places in this country without any inconvenience.

It would be an interesting irony if the advances in science made large pharmaceutical companies go the way of the dinosaurs ... that could happen if medical advances make treatment options based on an individual's genetics cheaper and easier to implement. We might go back to the old-fashioned pharmacy, where the "chemist" (I love that term -- the British equivalent to "pharmacist", if I understand correctly) concocts nostrums to order for customers, rather than simply counting out pills and transferring them from one bottle to another.

My brain is still in a bit of a fog from my recent travels and the change to daylight savings time, so I'm probably missing some obvious possibilities. You're welcome to add your constructive/amusing thoughts in the comments section, as always.