A friend of mine responded thus on Facebook:
Anonymous Friend via Barack Obama
It's angry-with-the-government's-funding-choices-season. When isn't something good being 'cut'?
This video from AARP comes to mind (claims rebutted here):
And this series of tweets:
The entire half-century budget of NASA equals the current two year budget of the US military.
The US military spends as much in 23 days as NASA spends in a year - and that's when we're not fighting a war.
The US bank bailout exceeded the half-century lifetime budget of NASA.
»
And the claims made justifying the low cost and importance of programs such as National Public Radio, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Planned Parenthood.
Here are all of these programs that the nation's leaders and citizens have supported. For some of the programs I've named, it has been 40 years of national funding, while for others the number is greater. Depending on who you are, these programs are necessities, national treasures or nuisances. Maybe you feel like you ought to be able to pick-and-choose which programs your taxes fund. What would get your dollar?
There isn't a clear answer of what to do when your country's funding is split into so many niche spaces, all under the utopian umbrella labeled, "For the common good". As my Grandma likes to say, "None of these problems can be solved by the end of breakfast." And yet people get angry. Do you like to be angry?
All this to say: that the problem reminds me a bit of Helicopter Parents. These programs and services were once little sprouts. Visions brought to fruition by thoughtful individuals. The visions grew and began to thrive with federal funding. An organization gets comfortable growing in this manner. It gets upset when threatened (by lobbies, cuts, regulations), but ultimately struggles to wean itself off. If you've ever moved home to your parents you know how it is. Their house, their rules, until you can afford to leave. And sometimes that leaving takes awhile because you really like doing things the way you do, like experimenting with working where the pay matches the cost to park and commute. Or shrimp treadmills. I digress.
What if these programs had began with and stuck to private backers? The money appears to be there, at least from figures on the richest U.S. households. Start-ups are doing it. People pushing their dream baby out with maybe not enough money to feed it, or realizing that they've got ample food for the baby but not anything for it to play with. Rather than worrying about being perfectly coddled, backers and producers can jump in or out of the house, taking baby or the food with them. Some start-ups survive. Some thrive. Some die. The culture is fast, with producers and backers moving from dream to dream, seeing what takes.
Look at The Impossible Project, wherein 10 former Polaroid employees took on the task of replacing Polaroid's analog film when the company decided to stop producing it. In two short years, they've got film. Only 25 employees, so not a huge operation that can fill the pockets of all who worked on analog film at Polaroid, but the dream continued.
How about Kickstarter? I've linked to the most funded projects. People with ideas getting backing for documentaries, new products, albums and sketchbooks from other individuals! Millions of dollars exchanged online, from one person to another.
This is where we're headed. Things accomplished by seeking the assistance of like-minded others. Even Barack is tweeting about it. (meta time?)
My observations on how to succeed:
1) Love and know what you are doing. Believe in your cause, even if deep down the only reason you're on board is to stay afloat. Fake love 'til you make...love. (Haha! Yup, you have that one friend you do this to, even if you're not actually "making whoopie" with 'em. In time the love grows.)
2) Know your community. Who actually gives a shit about what you're doing? How can you make it easier for them to love you?
3) Be online. This is the button-down collared shirt and tie you don't have to wear. Sorry if you don't like it, or it feels weird. Other people consider it standard.
4) Don't be a helicopter baby. Don't get mad. Don't accept funding from people who want to compromise your dream. Stay calm. Look elsewhere. Somebody's sitting on the cash, if you can hook them up. (If you are a helicopter baby, start looking for another way to make it happen.)
5) Get better, not bigger. All sorts of connotations with this one. Do you want to be too good to fail or too big to fail? Agile gymnast or hulked up bodybuilder, which one can make it in the wild?
What do you think about those programs whose federal funding has been cut or threatened recently? Would they survive a la The Impossible Project if the nation announced, "Hey, we're shutting down this part." What will happen with NASA next?
No comments:
Post a Comment