Your Community Needs You

I was recently chatting with a friend's soon-to-graduate-college brother about his plans for the next year. He had just returned from a semester in Amsterdam. Did he like it? Yes. Could he live there full time? Well, yes, but...

There are no problems there.

"What would I do?" he joked. "You can't make a difference if everything's already perfect."

He's right, though. A huge sector of our economy is based on social services, law-enforcers, safety and security, education, and poverty.

 Everyone plays a role in society, including deviants, homeless, and mentally ill. Without them, many existing jobs would cease to exist.

Is our economic system perpetuating these problems? Is capitalism the culprit for these systemic issues? Or perhaps, if we waged a war on poverty and won, would our economy and job market adapt? What if everyone was well-educated? Who, then, would do menial labor and work for hourly wages? Is that, too, a result of some sort of glass ceiling that our society has put in place?

It's something to ponder--a sort of chicken-and-egg debate even. Do we need police officers or do we need criminals? Which came first?
The truth in it is that our society needs every role filled--the homeless to provide social workers jobs and fill shelters and social workers and shelters to care for the homeless.
Naturally, people benefit from the sector of jobs created to help with social issues. Just as organically, people get paid for dealing with other community members' hardships.

An article in the Post today mentioned the huge shift in DC's population in the last 10 years. 20- and 30-somethings are flocking to DC to take advantage of the city's job market (and problems). This sudden influx in young, educated people opened a new niche in the DC market. Yoga studios, patio bars, dance clubs, boutique shopping, trendy eateries and bike lanes opened up in DC to meet the need. This new niche has come to be an essential part of the community; this special-interest group provides DC with new business opportunities.  The new 20- and 30- somethings need businesses catered to their special interests, and these special-interest shops need this particular clientele to survive.

No matter who you are, your community needs you. We are a food chain, our own little ecosystem, all relying on one another. It's just a matter of where you fall in that order.



--Megan