- Maximilian Thomas
- Toronto
- Canada
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Community!
How nice would it be to live in a place where all the products you used came from local producers and manufactures, where people greeted you when you passed by, where the people in your township came together for those who need the extra hand. I am talking about community!
Over the past 50 years it seems that the community that held people together in the United States has disappeared. As manufactures move overseas to find cheaper prices and the church becomes more and more distant, the people of America change their focus from their communities to themselves.
My passion is to bring community back to America. I would love to hear some suggestions and ideas on to how to make this happen. Anyone who would be interested in joining the journey, please do not hesitate to contact me. All my contact information can be found on my profile page.
So please any suggestions or ideas would be amazing!
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pat gilbert 50+
I think for any real involvement to take place there has to be a real purpose or goal with out this it will not fly.
Secondly I think that the government doesn't like individuals doing things like this as it impinges on their rice bowl. A friend of mine is volunteer fire fighter. He tells me the professionals do what they can to nullify their efforts because of this reason.
In order for the individual to prosper he has to have small groups to work with as with a family, church, boy scouts, chamber of commerce, etc. The problem is when the larger government creates an environment that does not allow this to occur as with high taxes, regulations, licensing etc. as this burdens the individual to the point of not having the time to do these activities.
http://www.ted.com/conversations/9808/how_do_we_get_back_the_neighbo.html
Maximilian Thomas
pat gilbert 50+
Maximilian Thomas
I want to bring small business back. It is important to have manufacturing and produce to be made, if possible, in the communities that can.
As a second to this, to make sure that the impact is more felt, to have secondary non for profit organizations to create an infrastructure so that they communities to be self suuficient.
Maximilian Thomas
Once there is an establishment of people dedicated to a cause, then work can start, with real, attainable goals attachted to it. I personally have a series of rough ideas to complete a series of goals I have in mind.
I think the problem at hand has less to do with the environment the government has created and more to do with the fact that people have no infrastructure for community to exist.
We can look at business for an example. We have moved from small, local businesses creating produce and operating the manufacturing to large, cookie cutter corporations bringing in the produce and moving the moanufacturing overseas. So we have changed from having towns working together to create a product to a series of high level executives making the decision on where the products should come from. So the towns have lost their pride, lost that bond that brought them together, lost the sense of who they were.
Now this is just one example, but there are several others. I honestly think that presented in the correct light the government would actually endorse a change in community.
Thank you for the comment!
pat gilbert 50+
Where a product comes from is irrelevant to my previous post.
Maximilian Thomas
My goal is to bring small businesses back to America.
pat gilbert 50+
Maximilian Thomas
pat gilbert 50+
Basic point of logic is that you have to compare what is to what was, this is done by a metric.
If you can't think up a metric that reflect progress in this endeavor then you do not have a goal as by definition a goal can be measured.
The old maxim of if you want to manage it then you have to measure it.
Where this gets a little tricky is in the area of is it a purpose or a goal.
For example I have the purpose of waking TEDsters up to the dangers of socialism. Ok great how do I measure my sucess? I can't therefore it is not a goal.
If I had the goal of getting TEDsters to register as Republicans (funny huh?) now that is a goal as I can count how many TEDsters I got to register or change their registration to Republican.
Maximilian Thomas
pat gilbert 50+
I will add that the goal of bringing back small business from overseas is dubious. Small business doesn't usually get off shored in the first place. And that is going to start shifting anyway as the Chinese are starting to make more money so the advantage is diminishing and that by 2015 they will be gone.
The factors in off shoring are not just money but also taxes and regulations with the highest corporate taxes in the world and some of the most onerous regulations not the least of which is Sarbanes Oxley.
Another factor is some of the worst educated individual in industrialized countries. This is absolutely caused at least mostly by goverment meddling.
Maximilian Thomas
For now I feel that we need to soldify what we believe, what we would like to see happen and how to go about doing it before we decide how to judge how effective it is. Now, I am not saying that it is not important, on the contary, I believe it is very important, but I think that we are not at that stage yet. Yes, we could create one today, but it would simply evolve as we did until we soldified what our views, believes and goals are.
pat gilbert 50+