NPR Story on Non-Profit Sparks Thought

[katie]

My top five priorities are:

Making love, not war.
Electing a PETA representative president of the United States.
Freeing the lab rats. And lab rabbits.
Killing all meat-eaters.
Hugging the trees.

Calm down, people. I’m kidding. Only a couple of those are priorities. *wink*

Here are some of the issues I’m ACTUALLY interested in. They are in no particular order and are probably not very intelligible, since I’ve slept two hours of the last…I can’t count that far back. Here they are, nonetheless.

1. Helping the homeless.
2. Helping the hungry.
3. Reduction of poverty.
4. Access to healthcare.
5. Health education.
6. Reduction in population and contraception/family planning education.
7. Many, many environmental concerns, but primarily global warming, all types of pollution, and conservation of natural resources.
8. I don’t know how to phrase this as an issue, but “using less stuff” is important to me. I’d like us (meaning me, America, the world, etc., but especially me) to be less stuff-driven.
9. Democrat empowerment! Getting more of us into office, getting the word out about why the current administration needs to be sent packing, etc.
10. Helping children. Wow, isn’t that vague. I guess I mean at-risk children, just being role models, helping them to want/get education, etc. Hmm, I probably need to think more about the “helping children” issue. Sorry.

One of my major global concerns is the population reduction issue. Too many people means a lot of them will be poor, hungry, homeless, and without access to education or healthcare. Also, too many people=bad for the environment.

Katie

P.S. Kinda strange that I am an advocate for a small global population, but my job is to help people live longer and therefore, keep the population up. I guess I prefer to reduce the population through family planning education rather than by obliterating the human race David-style!

P.P.S. Isn’t Rick great? Thank you guys for helping to make such a great guy.

[Thanin]

admin said:

A few weeks later I saw this student on the street corner handing out pamphlets on feminism.

Rather than wasting dead trees, she should have been castrating all the males that passed by. At the very least it would have cut down on the population within her reach.

[Betterout]

You know, if I just happened to notice that someone was castrating all the men passing by her, then there's no way I'd walk by her. No way, man. I wouldn't do it.

[Tyler]

Here's what I got so far:
Universal Healtcare
Redistibution of wealth.
Cultural Restoration
Social Justice
Conservation
Environmentalism
Education
Population Reduction
Tolerance / Peace
Dissolution of intellectual property
Increased identity development
Sex education / family planning

[amanda mcbride]

This is unrelated, but I thought I'd let you guys know that the topic of Talk of the Nation this afternoon is the direction of the Democratic Party and how the party should define itself. If you're interested and have a radio/net broadcast handy, you might tune in to NPR.

If you listen, let me know what your thoughts are concerning the ideas in the broadcast. I can't listen to it at work. Not everyone appreciates talk radio, ya see. So, it's country and/or easy listening for my afternoons...

[Tyler]

I believe that education will eventually be the solution to all the others. But that's a ways off.
What possible ways to work on each of these problems can you think of. This is brainstorming now, so feel free to send any crazy ideas. Trust me that they are not crazier than mine. Let's categorize each idea within the categories we've set forth above.
For example:
Education / Redistribution of Wealth / Family Planning
At-Cost Childcare centers

[Tyler]

Here's another one:
Universal Healthcare / Redistribution of Wealth / Social Justice / Conservation / Environmentalism / Education
Expand the military / national guard to include construction and maintenance programs on public lands at home. Anyone that wants a job can go to a recruitment center and say: "I don't want to kill anyone. Can I work?" and they'd be signed up to work any of a billion jobs I can come up with. They'd sign up for any amount of time they wanted, and during that time they'd have a job, healthcare, and income. They could be put on road construction, or work in libraries, or picking up trash in state and national parks and preserves (sound familiar?), work in nursing homes reading to old-folk.

What else could they do?

[x fan AKA rick]

Oh I don't know drive up the cost of the military.

[rickus]

Ty,

I'm not trying to stifle, by any means the direction you're taking this thread. As a matter of fact I think this is the logical direction to take it. But we were talking about the shape and direction of a Non-Profit not "Witch branch of government can we get to do what we want."

I know this is supposed to be brainstorming time which should be "Lets just get ideas out there" but I think you may have lost sight of what we're supposed to be brainstorming about. So NPO's.... What shape?

And the last thing I hope occurs is that by my saying this, this thread ends. Once I get a bit of the mountain of work that's on my desk off of it, I can participate a bit more. We're in a bit of an Xmas boom right now. Any way I'll put up some ideas of my own later. And thanks for keeping this thread alive Ty! I'm very interested in this idea!

[Guest Justin]

Tyler, this is similar to an idea I had a few years back. A wide array of service jobs--from commercial transportation to healthcare, from construction to legal advocacy, and from agriculture to education--could become public within a free enterprise economy and not jeopardize our principles. These jobs would basically be government subsidized and/or organized, with supervision arranged hierarchically on a regular g-scale. It could even be broken down according to enlistee/officer ranks, with education being the determining factor. Jon, for instance, might be a construction sergeant, as his job requires specific skills, but not necessarily education. Your brother Rick, on the other hand, might be a construction lieutenant j.g. at entry level. Likewise, Tammy, might be a healthcare captain, as her job requires specific education, and her experience would put her higher on the food chain. This preserves incentive to increase your education and training, which is important, 'cos Americans are always saying that the real problem with communism is that there's no incentive. Since skill levels per grade per field would be uniform, we could devise specific programs of study and even standardized tests. In effect, we could greatly reduce the number of employers wondering how qualified a person might be. "This I.T. position candidate is skilled at a Specialist range with two years of experience. This other candidate is a Major with seventeen years, but we can't afford her." Plus, most of the various skills and training are pretty much set in stone, so education can be tailored specifically according to the work path. Technicians & Tradesfolk have one set of courses (for enlistee grades), and Academic Services have another set (for officer grades). Of course, the major problem is budgeting this new civilian service corps, as Rickus mentioned. I was never sure how to handle that, although a few ideas did cross my mind. For instance, one fairly draconian possibility (to appeal to the Republicans out there) is financing the service corps with the federal funds saved on unemployment insurance, voc. rehab for "wasted" educations, medically treating the uninsured, etc. Anyway, I never came up with any good funding ideas, so I kinda abandoned the whole idea.

[Tyler]

I've always seen NPO's and NGO's and other O's as a stepping stone toward governmental change. Demonstrating with private sector efforts what works to push wide-spread change. To that end, the NPO would gather information about under-employed individuals, bid for governmental contracts for jobs like these, and work them at-cost with the intent of distribution of wealth and job-training. The day-care centers would be funded by charity initially, but once set up, would charge only the amount necessary to maintain the facility, non profit.

[Tyler]

Justin, I completely missed your ideas above because we posted at the same time. These are the kinds of ideas that will effect my thoughts on this subject for years to come. I always thought that the funding would have to come through some good idea. I know that sounds silly, but it seems to me that most enclaves like ours get their funding in this way. Somebody comes up with a good idea, it gets developed and takes off, and the business starts. I keep a running list of ideas going that I add to and subtract from on at least a weekly basis. I'd post them here, but then I'd be really paranoid when one appeared elsewhere (which it most often does).

[Tyler]

Let's take the subjects one at a time. We'll start at the top, Univesal Healthcare. The intent is to get medical coverage for the most people. What ideas do you have?
At first thought, I'm thinking of something akin to a medical union. Organization of the masses is the best hope for large social change. We could form a block of individuals of low income and try to get an insurance company, or a HMO to provide medical insurance for everyone. We could initially construct the policy to inlude only the very basics of medical care. Yearly medical, dental, and eye checkups. This would allow people access to basic knowledge about their state of health, and essentially get them in contact with an authority that can tell them: Stop eating McDonalds! Exercise more! Stop smoking!

[Tyler]

Here's a link to a place where Moveon.org has asked people to submit ideas to make things better.
www.sinceslicedbread.com/?moveon

[tenzingcory]

I think the term Katie is looking for is "Conspicuous Consumption"

Remember that if we educate all people we risk loosing what separates our classes and therefore widening the income gap and creating more social/economic problems... slowing urban sprawl and conspicuous consumption in had with decreasing the global populus back to 2 billion or less will hieghten the survival rate of the human race.

cocroches addapt why can't we

[Tyler]

What would a just and egalitarian society look like?