Friday, November 19, 2010

News from the Network, Vol. 3, No. 46

We've been ranting a bit about the situation in Ireland, and how Capital Homesteading might have the potential to solve the current crisis. Our insistence has even raised a little interest in some quarters. Naturally enough the question has come up as to how the concept of Capital Homesteading, designed for the United States, could be applied in the Republic of Ireland. Doesn't the crushing burden of debt preclude the possibility of ownership, or even getting out of debt?

Not at all. First, the answer to getting out from under the burden of debt is the "easiest" to solve: produce. This was how France got out from under the indemnity forced on it by Prussia in the 1870s — an indemnity specifically designed to cripple France forever. Taking advantage of a greatly expanded overseas market for French goods combined with a drastic decline in the world price of silver, France paid Fr 5 billion in barely three years, and prospered in doing it.

CESJ has developed an outline of a program, "An Illustrated Guide for Statesmen," that can be implemented anywhere in the world. Ireland would be the perfect exemplar project to prove the concepts. The only problem is in bringing the program to the attention of the powers-that-be, or even people who can open the doors to the powers-that-be.

We have been making a number of contacts over the past month or so, and continue to reach out. Alas, reporting on networking efforts is much less interesting on reporting on when networking efforts succeed. To that end, we need to increase our efforts, and that means more people reaching out — and that means you. Once we have that, we'll have much more to report than the following:

• Norman Kurland's interview on "Money America" this past Sunday went very well. A station in Richmond, Virginia has enquired about rebroadcasting the show. We're awaiting word from the people at WAIC. When we hear, we'll let you know when and where, at which time we'll also post instructions for any other radio station to request the show.

• We've been making continuing outreach efforts in our endeavor to present the Just Third Way to door openers and prime movers. Very few of them "pay off" — at least directly. This is a "numbers game," however, and the more attempts (good ones, anyway) that are made, the greater the chance that something will click. In the past week, for example, we sent material in response to general inquiries from the Philadelphia Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, and Der Standard, the Austrian equivalent of the Wall Street Journal.

• This past week Norman Kurland and Michael Greaney had a telephone conference with a gentleman in London who appears convinced that the Just Third Way as applied in Capital Homesteading is the best way to implement Prime Minister David Cameron's "Big Society" initiative. Communications have been a little spotty, probably due to the time and distance involved, but the possibility was raised of getting Norm a meeting with Mr. Cameron to discuss ways to adapt Capital Homesteading to the situation in the United Kingdom.

• The proposal to try and see if a meeting could be arranged with the British Prime Minister raised the prospect of leveraging such a meeting to other meetings with other key figures, such as the Prime Minister of Japan, and the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Éire.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 59 different countries and 49 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Brazil, Canada, and the Netherlands. People in Japan, the United States, Venezuela, Argentina and Egypt spent the most average time on the blog. (That 9 hours and 6 minutes from somebody in Tokyo sounds a little suspicious, however — we suspect somebody either fell asleep, or walked away and forgot the computer was on or something. Or maybe somebody in the government is catching on that Japan needs the Just Third Way as much as the United States does, and studied the matter in great depth.) The most popular posting is Norman Kurland's tribute to Robert P. Woodman, followed by "Keynesian Economics is Socialism Lite," "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," "Preventable Disasters" about the Irish crisis, and "Mean Green Mother from Outer Space" in the Halloween Horror Specials series. You know, the piece in the Say's Law/Real Bills Doctrine series on Economic Democracy, and some on the real efficiency of government, the political animal, and a couple others have average times of more than three hours, so maybe there was some real studying going on . . .
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.

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