Germany is being painted as the villain in the
(alleged) solution to the Greek debt crisis. Germany (and Germans) are, as we might expect, being
portrayed as Nazi stormtroopers and concentration camp
guards (how original) for wanting Greece to pay its debts (gasp!), or at least promise to do so (how rude!) — and, yes, the swastika has put in an appearance. Most people, however, seem to be missing a few salient facts. That is, besides the fact that people or countries shouldn't make promises (i.e., go into debt) that they have no intention of keeping.
 |
| A mild example (no, really) of the rage against Germany. |
For example, Greece was “forced” to agree to “austerity”
before, and did nothing. The Greeks seem
convinced that all the other countries in the “Euro Zone” are somehow
responsible for keeping the lavish promises made by their own country’s
government. Most important, as we have
seen in the blog series on the crisis, the so-called solution — even if it were
actually implemented — cannot solve the problem.
What will solve the problem?
It’s a simple two-step process: 1) Realize you can’t consume without
producing. 2) Start producing. Otherwise you’re consuming what others
produce without giving anything in exchange.
 |
| Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas |
Anything else puts the other countries in the Euro Zone,
especially Germany, in the position that Abraham Lincoln referred to during his
debates with Stephen Douglas:
“It is
the eternal struggle between these two principles — right and wrong —
throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face
from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the
common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the
same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that
says, ‘You toil and work and earn
bread, and I'll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from
the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live
by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for
enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
Now, on to things that are actually happening, instead of
just being talked about:
 |
| "Thanks, dude!" |
• CESJ’s article that appeared last
month in Homiletic and Pastoral Review,
“Pope
Francis and the Just Third Way”, is still gaining more
traction. A CESJ friend in Buenos Aires
who teaches at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, where Pope
Francis was Grand Chancellor before his election, has agreed to translate the
article into Spanish.
• CORRECTION: Last week we reported that Pope Francis had refused the
“communist crucifix” presented to him by President Evo Morales of Bolivia. We have since learned that Pope Francis
accepted the item and “another gift.” He
then turned around and dedicated both gifts to Bolivia’s patron, “Our Lady of
Copacabana.” In this way the pope
managed to defuse a potentially lose-lose situation by “re-gifting” back to the
donor in a way in which the people of Bolivia couldn’t possibly take (any
rational) offense. It did, however, get
rid of the thing as diplomatically as possible.
Morales seems to have a little egg on his face, and a spokesman for the
Bolivian government made a somewhat disingenuous statement that the president
had no ulterior motive in giving a gift that was virtually guaranteed to be
interpreted negatively by many as an attempt to gain a de facto papal endorsement of socialism, or publicly embarrass the
pope.
 |
| "Hi. Own me, or I'll end up owning you!" |
• The MIT Technology
Review just published an article, “Who
Will Own the Robots?” While we
commented on the article, no one seems to have picked up on or understood the
comment. We republish the gist of it
(edited to take out any dumb [or smart] errors) here: “It’s good to see
that MIT is finally asking the question Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler answered
more than half a century ago in their books, The
Capitalist Manifesto (1958) and The New Capitalists
(1961). How are people without existing savings or the ability to
restrict consumption to be empowered to purchase the capital that is making
their labor redundant and driving down wages? By financing the
acquisition of new capital with ‘future savings’: the present value of future
increases in production, repaid with the profits of the capital itself in the
future that anyone with a financially feasible project can access, instead of
‘past savings’: the present value of past reductions in consumption, by
definition a virtual monopoly of the currently wealthy. Shifting from
past savings to future savings as the source of financing for new capital
formation frees economic growth from the constraints of the past and allows
what is possible to determine the rate of economic growth as well as patterns
of ownership. This is why Kelso and Adler subtitled their second book, ‘A
Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of Savings,’ meaning past
savings, not future savings. Kelso and Adler's proposal was based on the work
of Dr. Harold G. Moulton, president of the Brookings Institution from 1928 to
1952 presented in his 1935 work refuting the Keynesian New Deal, The Formation of
Capital. By advocating that all new capital formation be financed
with new money created backed by the present value of the future increases of
production — the inherent feasibility of the capital itself — and repaid (and
the money cancelled) out of future profits of the capital, and replacing
traditional forms of collateral with capital credit insurance and reinsurance,
it is possible for anyone to own capital without redistributing what already
belongs to others. More about this can be found on the website of the Center
for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) under the heading ‘Capital
Homesteading.’ http://www.cesj.org/.
 |
| "Okay, one MORE time: socialism is BAD!" |
• An exceptionally misleading article appeared today in Christian Democracy Magazine, “Capitalism
and the Catholic Social Tradition: Conversing with Father Robert Barron.” The author twists some comments by
then-Cardinal Ratzinger about some good that could be found in certain
types of socialism into an endorsement of socialism, mis-defines property, and
ignores the explicit condemnations of socialism by the Catholic Church over the
past couple of centuries or so, e.g.,
“If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the
Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of
human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are
contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true
socialist. (Quadragesimo Anno, §
120.)” It appears that the author’s
errors are based on the assumption that capitalism and socialism are the only
possible alternatives. Too bad someone
didn’t send him a link to the HPR
article before he published his own, and let him know there is a way that
transcends the errors of both capitalism and socialism. He can be reached through his website: http://www.keithmichaelestrada.com/contact.html.
• As of this morning, we have had
visitors from 60 different countries and 46 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, India, and the Philippines. The
most popular postings this past week were “Halloween Horror Special XIII: Mean
Green Mother from Outer Space,” “News from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 26,”
“Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 8, No. 28,” and “Pope Francis and the Just Third Way.”
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#