Re-establishing America’s grass roots idea and product factory
Here is a great idea for bringing American small business and the actual capability to locally produce quality products and services – yet open to the world market. Multi-level marketing methods don’t encourage individually conceived products or services, just marketing the output of others far away.
When a man stands for free enterprise and puts his money and ideas where his mouth is, we have to pay attention. Glenn Beck has done remarkable things in the growth of his media empire while his life is threatened daily. His Internet channel GBTV.com now has more subscribers than CNN has audience!
We need to pay attention when opportunities to rebuild our local product development and marketing after decades of driving the talent needed to make things offshore.
Glenn Beck quietly worked on the Markdown/Marketplace idea. Perhaps his forays into communities that lost their base industries. Local ingenuity only succeeds when a need, raw materials, parts, ideas and freedom of action thrive… then a marketplace opens – a problem is solved, jobs and careers are created.
Virtually everything the Federal government does today is aimed at discouraging enterprise and charitable works. Even kid’s lemonade stands and donation of prepared food to homeless shelters are somehow anathema. There is something seriously wrong with this totalitarian mentality based on harassment and fines. It is at its core, a eugenicist agenda.
I’m reminded of two young Chinese men a few years ago who were in China’s back country with a laptop and internet access. They ran across a farmer who was growing a highly desirable mushroom of exceptional quality. He was barely surviving in his limited market, so the men established a broad market connection and developed a thriving local business – call it “Yangtze ingenuity” – a motivator far more open to the Chinese today than to the American who thrives on our vaunted “Yankee ingenuity.”
In my book, “Guide 25” www.lulu.com I described “The Fontana Effect.” GE closed down its Fontana, CA small appliance plant, moving it to Taiwan. 1,500 people lost their jobs while GE was rewarded with a $235 million tax write-off. GE still pays no taxes 40 years later.
With the advent of big box stores, the Fontana Effect has yielded a virtual loss of American production capability from the small shop to the thriving factory. Smaller minds assured us we no longer needed production capacity in an “Information Society.”
Local schools should require at all levels of schooling to watch and discuss History Channel’s “Modern Marvels” and Science Channel’s “How it’s Made” series. A form of Kahn Academy for entrepreneurs could awaken young minds to the awesomeness and complexity of the processes that produce the simplest the products we take for granted. Students could share in on line discussions with the actual designers and operators of systems that produce, say, a can of peaches. (Think it’s a simple product? Try it!) Talk about jobs - "progressives" don't have the slightest idea with their phony ideas about diversity.
Free enterprise makes it possible to create, design and build an infinite variety of products drawn from the infinite range of human skills endowed by our Creator in a truly diverse culture.
Another critical missing element is beauty. We’ve come to accept ugly cookie cutter structures that require little more than basic construction skills, leaving behind the artistic skills and talents that could produce beautiful products and structures with more challenging materials. Beauty is what ultimately builds pride and character in a community. It also provides meaningful work for those special ones in our society whose mental capacities thrive on simple and often repetitive work - giving them a sense of pride, not dependence.
Jerry is a retired engineer with strong experience in environmental innovation which he still applies today with 2 clean water and energy saving technologies. His life avocation in writing and study of philosophical and biblical themes as they apply to the body politic's spiritual warfare. He survived stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2006; now in excellent health. A graduate of the University of Illinois (1958, Industrial Engineering), Jerry had post graduate studies at both the University of San Francisco and the University of Santa Clara in California between 1961 and 1963 (Logic, Marketing). As co Founder and seminar presenter he was awarded a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Valley Christian University operating under California private-post secondary statutes for mid career student, VCU was the pioneer external degree school for mid career students. Its course structures were picked up by several well known Christian colleges. Hosted local broadcast radio and TV shows, "Religion on the Line" and "The News Firm" (jointly with wife, Joanne), respectively. Jerry has published several books that are available at Amazon. Jerry is available to speak as a visiting lecturer at the high school, college or community organization level. Jerry is married 55 years to Joanne Dean Todd – 3 children, 8 grandchildren.
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