The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

     Every day we are bombarded with messages to grab our attention.  It's really amazing how much is spent in order to get our attention.  The reason for this is because there is a lot of power in getting a message to the masses.  This was evident during the recent elections with the record amounts of money being poured into "swing" states. 

     The real issue in getting people's attention is the quality of the message because our time is so valuable.  The value of the message can be lost because of the shear quantity of messages we get.  As a small business owner, I want to get people interested in my product. I'm able to share about my product with enthusiasm because I believe in its value.  This is true with the conflict of ideas.  Each side is fully convinced that the idea they have is right.  Just because we might be right or have enthusiasm won't necessarly mean what we have will sell.  We need to get the information to others and convey that what we offer is truly in their interest.

      An illustration of this is the invention of sliced bread. Otto Fredrick Rohwedder was a jeweler that knew he had a good idea and sold his jewelry stores to fund it.  After building a prototype of a bread slicing machine a fire burned down the factory he housed it in and destroyed it and his blueprints.  After taking few years of coming up with the funds to build a machine, he sold one in 1928.  Within five years there was more sliced bread on the store shelves in America than unsliced. Otto's idea was around for years before it really caught on because of the circumstances he found himself in.  After large bread companies bought his bread slicing machines the popularity of it was so great that when the government made sliced bread illegal in 1943 as a conservation effort the ban was short lived.

  I believe the concept of true freedom is desirable, but it is not being transmitted to the degree competing ideas are.  This is not an accident as the goal to transmit the opposite concept was outlined in the Communist Manifesto many years ago.

     There is a beauty in having private property and belongings, to be able to work with the promise of reward, and to not begrudge those that have already gotten there.  Those that oppose freedom would have us to turn against those that have reaped the benefits of freedom.  None of us will enjoy those freedoms, which is sometimes called the American Dream, if we don't have the good sense to be happy for others that are successful from great ideas and hard work.

     The man that came up with sliced bread must have been on to something because I'm hard pressed to find any bread at the store that's not been sliced.  In the past, the desire for freedom has spread like wildfire.  It could happen again.