Via Eugene Volokh, Edward Bloches at  creativity_unbound offers a Plan B (no, nothing to do with sex) if the Occupy Movement ends up going home now that the temperature in Zuccotti Park is dropping. 

Here’s my idea for saving America in case the Occupy Movement doesn’t work. It’s an idea that could help us increase empathy. It takes full advantage of social media’s true potential. It’s a program that steals from the military and juries — practices that do work — when it comes to creating interdependency.

Mandatory social media service

• We require every 18-year-old in America to participate in mandatory social media service as part of a daily or weekly routine for one year.


• We assign our young adults to a racially diverse online social group comprised of 12 people from different regions, backgrounds, income brackets. (Google+ is a potential platform.)


• We present each group with a social challenge -– obesity, jobs, poverty, high cost of education, even the problem of young men getting their sex education from watching online porn — and we ask them to solve the problem.


• We give them benchmarks, goals, and require an outcome in the form of an idea, a program, a new policy or maybe just a video.


• Finally we aggregate all of the solutions on one public website where the press, our legislatures, businesses and educators can access, rate and maybe even implement the ideas.

The good news is that the strains of Kumbaya aren’t on autostart.  The bad news is that there are 7 million trolls applauding this idea already.

Personally, I think this is a stroke of genius, especially the part about 18 year olds crowdsouring a solution to “jobs, poverty, high cost of education, even  the problem of young men getting their sex education from watching online porn.”  Because all of these things can be solve, if only we force 18 year olds to sit on the couch in their parents basement, while munching on Cheetos, and type on a computer keyboard.

Obesity doesn’t stand a chance.  Right on, brother.