My post on Inc.com today, “Happy 200th Birthday to Henry David Thoreau,” (the editors changed the headline) began

Happy Birthday to Henry David Thoreau, a True Family Businessman

The entrepreneur and supporter of self-reliance, simplicity, and small government was born 200 years ago.

200 years ago today, Henry David Thoreau was born.

July is a big Thoreau month. On July 4, 1845 he moved to live by Walden Pond, pictured above, for 2 years. He spent a night in jail, July 24 or 25, 1846, to avoid supporting slavery, inspiring generations.

Most periodicals reporting on his birthday talk about nature, his love for it, and his legacy of protecting it. He inspired John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, for example.

Many describe his legacy in inspiring Martin Luther King Junior, Mohandas Gandhi, and other great historical leaders.

Thoreau didn’t just ponder. He acted.

We at Inc. are businesspeople. Entrepreneurs, many of us. We don’t merely observe. We act.

Thoreau was a small businessman, a family businessman. He financed his first book, which failed. He was resilient, as we strive to be, and his next book, Walden, succeeded.

I propose we businesspeople, we satisfiers of unmet demand, we self-determined actors who prefer not relying on government to solve problems we can ourselves celebrate his memory in a different, more active, more self-reliant way, to meet unmet demand.

Read the rest at Happy 200th Birthday to Henry David Thoreau.