News from the Network, Vol. 2, No. 29

A few weeks ago we posted comments on this blog to the effect that Keynesian economics labors under the delusion that you can get out of a hole by digging it deeper. Some people expressed doubts that the Great Defunct Economist ever said or implied any such thing. Whether or not TGDE said it or meant it, it's painfully evident that Keynesians believe it as unquestioned dogma. Yesterday (Thursday, July 16, 2009) the CNS news service reported that Mr. Joseph Biden, Vice President of the United States, stated unequivocally, "Now, people when I say that look at me and say, 'What are you talking about, Joe? You're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?'" Biden said. "The answer is yes, that's what I'm telling you." [Emphasis added.]

Paradoxically, we can agree with Mr. Biden — if by "spend money" he means implementing Capital Homesteading and opening up democratic access to the means of acquiring and possessing private property in the means of production. Proper use of the commercial banking system and the Federal Reserve to create new money for financially feasible productive projects in ways that create new owners would, in and of itself, go a long way toward restoring not only faith in the government, but lay the foundation of a financially and politically sound economy.

If you know how to get information about Capital Homesteading to Mr. Biden, or if you know somebody who knows how (or know somebody who knows somebody who knows how . . . ad infinitum, or at least to Kevin Bacon's six degrees of separation), give it a shot. Clearly at this point we have nothing to lose and everything to gain, as can be seen from this week's News from the Network:

• The letter on the pope's new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, we sent to the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday and posted as an entry on this blog yesterday has received some very favorable comment. Guy Stevenson posted the letter and a link to this blog on the website of "America's Independent Party," in which Alan Keyes is involved. Antonio Betancourt, of the Summit Council for World Peace commented, "The content of this letter as a response to the Wall Street Journal's article on the Pope's latest encyclical on the global economy is what makes me so proud to be a member of and be part of the Center for Economic and Social Justice ("CESJ"). What a clarity and depth in just a few paragraphs."

• Dawn K. Brohawn has been developing and refining an overall plan to restructure the CESJ website. While the task can seem monumental, the end result should be a website that is both more "user friendly" and conveys the message of the Just Third Way more effectively and efficiently.

• The CESJ Quarterly Board Meeting will take place tomorrow, Saturday, July 18, 2009 at 10:00 am. Please advise CESJ via the contact information on the website if you want to be notified of future Board Meetings.

• One of the topics discussed at the Board Meeting will be the possibility of turning the current blog series on usury into a book. If the project proves to be feasible, the emphasis will be shifted to the Just Third Way as a whole from the relatively narrow subject of usury and its effect on concentrating ownership of the means of production.

• The June-July issue of The Catholic Worker contains an interesting article, "False Gods, Real Dilemma," by Ted Walker, on the problem of advancing technology and human alienation. One possibility not explored in the article is restructuring the social order along the lines suggested by the Just Third Way to ensure that humanity controls technology through private property, rather than allowing technology to be used to control humanity by continuing the present concentrated distribution of ownership. Technology can play an important role in securing freedom and respect for personal sovereignty and human dignity — but only if actual, flesh-and-blood human beings own (and thus control) the technology, instead of the other way around, as is effectively the case when ownership of the means of production is concentrated. As Dorothy Day liked to quote, "Proper-ty is proper to man." We would only insert the word "every" between "to" and "man," and make certain that "man" is understood in its generic sense.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 28 different countries and 42 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, Brazil, the UK, and the Philippines. People in Chile, the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and Canada spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings continue to be those in the series on usury, or which only a few remain to go up, and the news reports.

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.