One thing we’ve noticed from the responses to this blog and
to CESJ books and lectures is that few people really understand two
institutions basic to any society: private property and money. The problem is that modern economic theory
has made these two things so complicated that their very simplicity comes
across to some people as some odd, possibly even sinister.
Put your mind at ease.
There is nothing sinister about either private property or money. It is love
of money, that is, putting too much importance on it and obsessing about it,
that is the root of all evil, not money itself.
Given that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” perhaps all we need is
for more people to be able to participate in money creation to buy their own
capital for them to stop putting so much of the wrong kind of emphasis on it.
That’s why, perhaps, we should all be working for the
passage of a Capital Homestead Act:
• We just returned from the annual Rally at the Federal
Reserve. Dr. Robert Brantley served as
Master of Ceremonies and gave the opening prayer and closing benediction. Naturally we’re all exhausted (because of the
event, not Bob’s prayer. . . ). Except
(of course) for perpetual motion machine Norman Kurland, who was the Keynote
Speaker. His talk outlined thoughts
through history on private property in capital, from the Jewish, Christian,
Islamic and even pagan tradition.
• This writer gave a brief description of the purposes for
which the Federal Reserve was established: to furnish the country with an
“elastic” asset-backed currency that was uniform and stable by rediscounting
qualified paper for agriculture, commerce and industry. There was also the relatively minor task of
retiring the old debt-backed currency and replacing it with asset-backed
currency — which was soon derailed as the federal government began financing
its deficits using the money creation powers of the Federal Reserve.
• Dr. Scott Holmes gave a rendition of “16 Bills” after a
couple of drum and flute sets orchestrated by Jerry Peloquin, one-time founding
drummer of the Jefferson Airplane group and developer of the Family Fish Farms
Network concept.
• Dr. Robert Ornelas, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of
California, was there with his Christian Hip-Hop group, the SOG Crew. They were very well received by the crowd.
• Dave Hamill from Georgia gave a rousing speech urging his
fellow Evangelical Christians to join with the Jews, Catholics and Muslims in
supporting Capital Homesteading.
• Tomorrow is the CESJ annual celebration and board
meeting. I would probably have a lot
more to put in these news items, except I’m very tired, and I still have to
bake my special pumpkin bread for the meeting tomorrow, and make 72 deviled
eggs.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 58 different countries and 52 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, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Saudi Arabia.
People in El Salvador, Pakistan, Qatar, Portugal, and Singapore spent the most
average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past week were “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Social Justice
IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice,” “Some Thoughts on Money, II: The
Different Schools of Thought,” and “The Greatest Danger to Religion Today.”
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.
