How To Profit From America’s New Shopping List

Hey America, if you are paying attention, you can make a lot of money right now!

President Obama just told us his shopping list for his three year plan (funny, it takes three years for fruit trees to produce). Obama is about to get a check for $825,000,000,000 dollars and he wants to buy all sorts of cool new things for America, such as:

10,000 school renovations – Great for all the folks who can help kids learn about chickens and growing vegetables and neat stuff like that

Improved local community communications networks – Hey, I sell those things!

75% of Federal building to be more energy efficient – You mean like ride sharing? Light bulbs? Turning computers off?

2.5 Million weatherized homes – Wow, whoever makes bricks and insulation from waste plastic bags & stuff will make a killing!

Double America’s renewable energy – Woo hoo! I sell hooch making machines! I’m gonna be rich!

Anyway, I am writing about this because the secret is, and always will be, to be a master of markets for things people really need. That means neighborhood collectives can team up and go legally harvest firewood and split it up among the community, where people volunteer their labor in exchange for good and services they need.

Money, as we know it, is just a means of representing value. What has real value to you? Probably the same things that have value to everyone else: Food, shelter, transportation, water, electricity, friends, resilient neighborhoods and communities, skills and stuff the community can use.

That’s the power behind Bright Neighbor. We offer a machine that helps fix community economies and ecology. Think about it this way…

Chickens are egg machines.
Gardens are fruit and vegetable machines.
Trees are fruit and nut machines.
Worms and mushrooms are soil fixing machines.

Bright Neighbor is a communications system, a carbon reduction machine, a money saving machine, and a community repair machine all-in-one. We have implemented it in governments, businesses, faith communities, private corporations, and with individual community organizers who want to fix their community. Our customer base now ranges in all of these markets, and if President Obama wants to buy any of these things, Bright Neighbor is one of America’s post-petroleum startups now open for business.

Three cheers for the Three Year Plan! I hope you make oodles of money.

- Randy White

PS: If you are interested in setting up a Bright Neighbor community communications system, please fill out this form.

The Mother Of All Crossroads

My buddy Sam Drevo is a world class kayaker. He has navigated some of the fiercest waters on planet earth while simultaneously making love to and taunting mother nature. Sam looks at rapids ahead, and paddles straight into what could be the last moments of his life every time. It is his confidence, training, and humility that always allow him to come through alive, even if he knocks his head along the way. At least he has a plan for rough waters, and knows how to navigate new, uncharted territory like an expert.

And Sam has known adventurers who have made mistakes and paid with their lives. We are all fallible, right? You know you yourself have made miscalculations in the past just like everyone else, and things haven’t gone according the exact way you thought they might go.

Oh sure, you must have been smart about your plans, made all your mental details, laid out your strategy, and went for it, right? You were plotting, you see. We all plot every day, because we have to in order to survive. It could be anything from what to do in case you wash your cell phone and lose all your stuff, get that hot person to go out with you, or try to get away with something naughty. It could have be anything from trying to fake your own death, to helping fix your community. As long as you have a plan.

And right now, it seems many people have been caught off guard with this economic hardship and are just now scrambling to make a plan.

Who usually makes the plans for you? Is it your faith leader? Your boss? Your spouse? Henry Kissinger?

As we continue along the timeline of our lives, we are at the mother of all crossroads in human history. Everyone knows something really, really big is going on, but no one seems to know who to listen to about it anymore. Even as Obama takes his place on the throne, I am finding people asking themselves “what is my plan, and do I know exactly what to do?”

We can certainly make up for our past mistakes, we absolutely must. We blew it, America. We screwed up, bigtime. I have screwed up , you have screwed up, we all screwed up. Now we are facing the consequences, and we need plans that are not only ready to go, but that are already working.

As we each can at least pitch in at the local level, we need to be asking ourselves:

- Do I have a good relationship with my neighbors?
- What skills do I have that can help the community?
- What can I do to help others that will make me feel better?
- Do I really need all this stuff I have acquired to be happy?
- How will I make rent / the mortgage this month?

In globalism, we are expected to either be a producer or a consumer. You either make something, or you use something. Then there are the middlemen – called markets. And it is the markets that are collapsing, along with the ability for people to earn money as markets cease. If you get laid off, and no one else will hire you, what are you going to do to survive?

It is for this reason that I created Bright Neighbor. We are setting up communities across the country right now, and we are here to help governments, communities, businesses, and faith groups. We are already doing it, and are teaming up with Powell’s Books to offer the new Bright Neighbor University lecture series.

In April, I will be presenting an hour long workshop called “Lawns to Gardens: 10 Strategies For Thriving Through The Recession“. Or a title like that. More details to come!

- Randy White

BONUS VIDEO:
Sam Drevo and the Down The River Cleanup Crew

On the Behavior of Staying and Keeping Warm

What is more evil:

A) Running your heating source (gas, electric, oil, etc.) at full blast at the future expense of other humans
B) Asking for assistance once you have exhausted all of your own resources?

Are either evil at all?

Are you here, do you really exist?
Why does blood flow from open flesh?
Will we actually be able to stop the planet from toasting us right off the surface?
Will we destroy ourselves with nuclear devastation and religious wars?
Is nuclear war carbon negative or carbon positive?
Will children starve to death because their parents are out of work?
Will hard working people lose their homes because of government and financial services greed?
Will people start to take part in the creation of food, not just the eating of it?
Will people voluntarily wear a warm bathrobe instead of turning on their heat?

These are some samples of the thoughts I have wondered about this morning. And these thoughts of course become explorations themselves, as we question our existence and how we will possibly feed so many people as the economies of the world collapse.

After all, people would rather play video games and sell “thin air” than get out and work the soil. But what choice do we have? The government can’t hand out welfare checks and food stamps forever, there are too many people taking and not enough people putting back in. That means there is an imbalance in the force, young Luke.

So how do we counter that imbalance?

It seems people are waking up to our desperate situation.This is when strong leaders are needed, and people need to support their leaders. George Washington would have lost the Revolutionary War against the British if France hadn’t come to his aid to help him pay his troops. Of course, he hung his troops for not showing up to work… at least these days you just get fired.

Yes, we have become a nation of pansies, crying like babies for handouts from Mom and Dad government and the generosity of people who love us. Or some kind, random stranger who helps you out because it is the right thing to do. However you survive, the question still remains:

Do you wear a bathrobe, or blast the heat?

I am in a bathrobe in my freezing ass house, and I wish I could blast the heat. But it’s not the right thing to do. Brrrrrrr.