One of the problems of this society is the underutilization of human resources. Many people I know are "underemployed", in the sense that they can't seem to find a job that matches their capabilities. Whatever mechanisms are out there don't seem to do this match very well. In particular, volunteerism seems to be a vastly underutilized resource.
There was a time in this country that when a family's barn burned down, the neighbors got together and raised a new one. Here we see a case where a family's roof failed, so the neighbors repaired it (and then some). We don't see this very often in the modern world.
Many of you are probably familiar with the Wiki concept of contributing free work to an online cause. Thousands of nearly anonymous people around the world have gotten together (in a virtual way) to create the WikiPedia, a free online encyclopedia. Thousands of Freepers have assembled to animate an important discussion forum called FreeRepublic. Thousands have geeks have come together to work on Linux and other projects. A bunch of patriots have assembled to patrol our border, as the Minutemen.
I'm thinking this could be generalized into the notion of WikiWork, where people could get together in the online and the real world to do things that should be done but aren't. The Wiki folks have put together a Meta-Wiki, but this still seems focused on online content development rather than real-world activity.
The meme starts here.
That sounds like a tag line, so I'm adopting it.
I agree - too many of us yell for the gov't to do this - do that.
I think the Minutemen is perfect - like the people who manned the watchtower's in WW11, keeping an eye out for planes or subs.
Why SHOULDN"T we people do some of this stuff we think the gov't or ANYbody else should?
Pres. Bush gave us the challenge - I ;d like to see more of it