Thursday, March 6, 2008

what is federal government actually doing for me?

Things I know it does: negotiate with other federal governments, levy taxes, wage wars. What else? What can I see on my street that the feds have to do with? Do I really need a federal government? Would it be enough to just have a state or city government?

Love Banking

Just curious if we tallied up the love versus hate in terms of actions during the day if we'd come up with more love than hate. I think we would, and therefore it would be cool to see. Like how we theorize about the existence of a "relationship bank" from which you deposit and withdraw emotional support, but on a larger scale, a global scale. If you did something good or something good was done for you, make a deposit. If things went wrong for you that day, go ahead and make a withdrawal. Blog the item, rate the deposit and/or withdrawal values. I surmise we'd see much more love than hate, and we'd have a surplus of that love to spread around.

What things can a neighborhood share easily?

Not sure that my neighbors can actually share everything they own with me or I with them. A ladder, yes. A hot tub? not as easily. A pool in the summer is nice, but what about the liabilities? A snowblower, sure, but what about the upkeep and storage of the thing? The purchase in the first place? The current worth of the thing? Not so easily done than said, my socialist siblings. How can those things that we agree to share be shared? A check-out system? Is their an escrow situation that lets us buy neighborhood stuff? Does that then necessitate a neighborhood council of some sort to decide what gets bought? Would a bureaucracy like that be helpful or harmful? Argh!

What are the best question ideas?

This entry is that very thing, a question rather than an idea. It's just as valuable in terms of moving ideas forward as an idea, perhaps even moreso. A directed question leaves you wanting to know more, wanting to have input, wanting to answer. From here on out, these good questions will have the same weight as the ideas that purport to answer a question in the first place.

Business directory with teeth

Let's say I want to open up a nail salon. I don't, but let's just say. I'd want to know if there were other nail salons in the area, right? I could walk the beat, sure, but I also want to know if there *isn't* one in the area as well. What I want is a directory of what kind of stores are in a particular area, and if there is a gap in that service that I can fill or a surplus of that service that would make my job harder. Does the chamber of commerce do this? They should.

Micro-federalism

Golly this is a big idea. Not a new one by a long shot, but certainly worth repeating and expanding upon.Imagine if we had the means of local production for a great deal more of the things we use every day. What if we had direct access to recycled plastic, recycled glass, reused metal and wood and aluminum and other raw but sustainable materials.

Then, what if we also had our own means of power production in the
form of geothermal, wind, and solar electricity.What if we also had smaller and more democratic means to decide how our neighborhood was going to look and act? If we didn't have so many fingers in our local pies?

We'd have micro-federalism. That's what the older folks are really talking about when they refer to "the good old days" , not the 1950's. Take back your lives, take back your neighborhoods, your communities, your planet.


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