Is the stock market still plunging? Or is it rising? Is this the beginning of the end? Or is it the end of the beginning? Are you pro or antihistamine? Is it colder in New York than it is in the summer? What’s the difference between a duck?
If you are baffled by any of these questions, you are not
alone. As is becoming increasingly
evident with each passing day, most of those who pass as leaders in the world
haven’t got a clue as to what is going on.
Other, genuine leaders, are surrounded by entrenched centers
of power, fed incomplete information, are shielded from anything outside the
bureaucratic paradigm, and are almost always misrepresented by the media. Can you say “Pope Francis”?
Be that as it may, here are this week’s news items:
• Sales of CESJ’s
latest “Paradigm Paper,” The Political
Animal: Economic Justice and the Sovereignty of the Human Person, are off
to a good start. The Political Animal, like all CESJ publications, is available in
bulk at substantial savings. With the
20% discount applicable to bulk sales (i.e.,
ten or more copies of a single title), a full case of 50 is $400, plus
shipping. Enquire at “publications [at]
cesj [dot] org” for details and cost of shipping bulk/wholesale orders. Individual copies are available now on Amazon, and on Barnes and Noble. Please
note: CESJ does not sell retail.
• A meeting with
American University student Davis S. went well yesterday. Davis handled the audio visual function at
CESJ’s presentation there last week, and became interested in the subject.
• People are starting
to catch on that something might be wrong.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal,
Daniel Henninger in “A Year of Living on the Brink” (10/16/14, A17) pointed out
a few obvious facts about the global situation, especially over the past
year. It’s nothing that we haven’t been
saying, but Henninger gets his stuff into the Wall Street Journal. . . .
He makes one slip, however, in looking to the next American president to
set things right. The fact is, the
act of social justice gives each of us the power to start changing things
now — as long as we know what we want, such as the Just Third Way.
• CESJ had a very good
telephone conversation last Friday with Dr. Derry Connolly, a founder and
president of John Paul the Great Catholic University in California, and Dr. John Kincaid. Both Connolly and Kincaid sounded very
interested in CESJ’s natural law-based approach to economics — and would be
very interested in talking to someone with a Ph.D. in economics who is familiar
with the Just Third Way. JPGCU offers
undergraduate degrees in Business and in Communications, an MBA with a
concentration in Film Producing, and an MA in Biblical Theology.
• Also in the Wall Street Journal, this time from
Wednesday, William A. Galston had an insightful article on the effects of
advancing technology on the jobs “market.”
As astute commentators such as Charles Babbage and Jean-Baptiste Say
have been pointing out for around two centuries or so, advancing technology
displaces labor from the production process.
Galston didn’t really suggest a solution, but he could have, had he read
the 1964 interview of Louis Kelso in Life
magazine: “If the machine wants our job, let’s buy it.” If you own the machine, you have the right to
the income the machine generates, and you can use your labor in becoming more
fully human.
• Deacon Joseph
Gorini, CEO of Evangelization Enterprises, Inc., sent us an article on Thursday
of this week about a course being offered in “Economics for Ecclesiastics.” We thought that the concept is a good one,
and we believe that more people, especially religious leaders, need a more
solid understanding of economics. The
problem is that the course as described was pure Keynesianism, the direct
antithesis of the Just Third Way. This
tells us, of course, that we need to make more and faster progress with Justice
University to counter the pervasiveness of some very bad ideas.
• We are making great
progress with an article on business cycles requested by the editor of the
American Journal of Economics and Sociology.
It may even be ready by the (extended) deadline at the end of this
month. . . .
• Astrid Uytterhaegen,
CESJ’s Fellow, has returned to Belgium to continue her studies for her Masters
in economics. Plans are already being
discussed for another “site visit” either after the New Year, or in the Summer
so she can continue her Just Third Way research.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 63 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 United Kingdom, Canada, the Philippines, and Australia.
The most popular postings this past week were “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Thomas
Hobbes on Private Property,” “Fulton Sheen Suspended . . . Again?, III: Faith
v. Reason . . . Again?” “Response to Professor Shakespeare, I: CESJ’s
Position,” and “The Purpose of Production.”
Those are the happenings for this week, at least those 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, so we’ll see it before it goes up.
#30#
