Guilford Merchants Association, MyGMA

Apparently the Greensboro Merchant Association and the Guilford Merchants Association are one in the same as is the High Point Merchants Association. I called High Point and the lady answered the phone, "Good afternoon, GMA." Same for the Greater Greensboro Merchants Association.

They are in-fact, the Guilford Merchants Association-- 4 names, one organization. Are we seeing a trend? Check out the rest of this blog and you will see that a great many of the non profits that run Greensboro and Guilford County are for all intents and purposes, one in the same. Want something done that isn't allowed by the charter of your non profit? No problem, simply start up a new non profit and donate your money to yourself. And why not continue to use all your old alias names after you merge them all into one? That way, when the local newspapers and television stations start quoting you on how you stand on say, a downtown performing arts center it appears as if everyone is in agreement. As one friend far to the right of me likes to call it, machine politics.

But you see, not everyone is in agreement. Many downtown business owners are feeling as if the area's non profits are playing favorites and playing downtown business against downtown business. They've even gone so far as to start alternative downtown groups who finally recognize of the rest of Greensboro has been saying for years. "Downtown Greensboro Inc does not represent me."

W.E. Heasley writes the following in the News & Record:

"Hence the chicken was created and the chicken did in fact lay eggs. Then the eggs hatched and the chicken and its offspring lived happily ever after ... or so it seemed until the chicken’s creator (politicos through the mechanism of government) next allowed habitats to move into the farmyard.

The created farmyard is, by design, a noisy place. Allowing habitation in the noisy farmyard is government failure, as the government created, promoted and wanted a noisy farmyard.

When it comes to externalities such as noise, few bother to investigate Nobel prize in economics winner Ronald Coase’s “Coase Theorem.”

Part of Coase’s theorem is that the regulator can only guarantee the efficient outcome if he knows enough about the cost of control to decide which party should be considered the polluter and which should be considered the victim.

Exactly which entity is the victim?

The entertainment firms? The habitational firms? Politicos through the mechanism of government, which brought the two divergent firms within close proximity?

It’s neither the entertainment nor the habitational entities that created the environment for a noise problem. It’s a case of classic government failure.

Government’s failure of promoting two divergent segments within close proximity is then solved by more government failure of reducing property rights (through the noise ordinance)?"

I bring this up because the noise issue was in -fact, the straw that broke downtown's back and made clear to everyone that good governance can not be maintained and managed by corporations be they for profit or non profit.

Continue to page 32. The Greensboro Interactive Resource Center, Board.