Robots will soon deliver pizza … Self-driving cars are about to be legalized in California. That same technology will enable the robot revolution … Futurists and science fiction writers have predicted for decades that one day smart robots would roll around town doing errands for us. Today, that future seems still far off. But it's just around the corner. It's all thanks to Google, as well as car companies and universities that are making incredible advances in the technology for self-driving cars. Google's Prius is already a better driver than you are … – ComputerWorld

Dominant Social Theme: This is really great. Robots are the next big thing in car services.

Free-Market Analysis: So now one big reason for Google mapping becomes clear: to create an electronic grid that would allow for the use of robotic drivers. Why are we not surprised?

And what's wrong with robot drivers, anyway? Seems to be an advance that is intended to provide more efficiency generally.

And yet … the use of such facilities powers the determination of various social "controllers" to create a transportation system that is "hands off" – that normal human drivers won't use, or even be able to use.

Doubtless it will start with a driving enterprise that will include both humans and computers and end with one that effectively reduces human interactions. Here's some more from the article:

In 2004, I was invited by the Pentagon to cover a historic event in California's Mojave desert: The DARPA Grand Challenge. DARPA, the U.S. military's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, wanted to accelerate the development of self-driving cars for use on the battlefield.

The agency challenged universities and private companies to enter their robotic vehicles in a contest – a 142-mile course that had to be navigated by self- driving cars, trucks and even a motorcycle. The winner would receive a cash prize. None of the entries made it even to the 10-mile mark. While robot cars couldn't even handle a dirt road in the desert then, now they share the highways with us.

Google's self-driving cars may soon appear on Nevada roads, where the state's Department of Motor Vehicles approved the nation's first autonomous vehicle license.

Google, for example, has developed a fleet of eight self-driving cars, including six Toyota Priuses, as well as an Audi and a Lexus. A driver sits in the driver's seat without doing anything and a Google engineer in the passenger seat. This is a precaution and, it turns out, an unnecessary one … Google's is just one of many successful self-driving car projects.

The major car companies — including Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Ford, GM, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Volvo — all have advanced self-driving car projects in the works. Many universities do, too. And of course, the Pentagon has been working on self-driving vehicle projects for decades … From a technology point of view, the self-driving car is ready for wide-scale public use.

Yes, one could merely welcome this as the inevitable march of progress and, in fact, it is true that "progress" is not easily broken off except by the advent, say, of a nuclear holocaust.

But what is also clear is that the groups involved in the current relentless march toward robot control of cars are not a very savory lot. There's DARPA, of course, that pursues a mission, generally, of militarization.

Then there's Google, which has been thoroughly co-opted by the military-industrial complex. And finally, there's the car industry itself that has proven to be the handmaiden of Western globalist interests generally.

It has been interesting, to say the least, to watch the auto industry worldwide leverage itself in support of power elite memes, especially that of "green," carbon-free approaches.

There is no certitude as to whether the world is warming, nor is there any consensus as to whether such warming would be "bad" – except for a few islands that would inevitably be swamped.

The idea that one needs to remove man-made carbon from the atmosphere and store it underground represents a looniness that one cannot even find in the most extreme genres of science fiction.

And yet the world's auto companies are busy churning out cars that advertise their lack of carbon effluence – as if the idea that less carbon dioxide is somehow healthy for the planet is reasonable.

Too little carbon dioxide, in fact, and life on the planet as we know it begins to die off.

Global warming is a promotion – a dominant social theme. It is fear-based propaganda, designed to increase government control over people's lives. One cannot help but think robot-driving is being promoted for the same reason.

The idea is always the same: Restrict people's ability to use technology to enhance individual independence. Use technology instead to reduce freedom rather than enhance it.

Electric cars, carbon-reduction and now robot drivers. Our bet is that in each case, these "breakthroughs" will be utilized to further restrict the ability of people to drive their own cars where they want without being spied upon or generally harassed.

The article concludes with the observation, "The only barrier to broad consumer availability is for governments to legalize them and for companies to build them and make them available for sale."

Sounds a bit like a threat.