Although
there has been no sign of actual increases in the production of marketable
goods and services in a way that allowed the full participation of everyone as
both producers and consumers, the stock market took a big jump right after the
election. The real problem remains,
however: how do we restructure the system to give as many people as possible to
the opportunity and means to become capital owners? All we can say right now is that we’re
working on getting through to people who might help carry the message:
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| Natural rights and solidarity come from people, not the State. |
• Possibly because of the recent
series on solidarism, the number of visitors to the blog has (probably
temporarily) quadrupled. We noticed,
however, that the postings featuring the constitutional scholar William Winslow
Crosskey also excited a bit of interest, maybe in light of the results of the recent
election.
• Oddly enough, despite the fact
that the first principle of economics is “Consumption is the sole end and
purpose of all production,” no one grasps the obvious conclusion that producing
to generate savings (defined as the excess of income over consumption) in order
to have financing for investment might possibly throw a monkey wrench into the
works (or bung a spanner, for fans of P.G. Wodehouse). Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler had the right
idea: instead of saving to invest . . . invest to save, that is, shift from
past savings that result from consuming below production, and go with future
savings that result from producing more in response to increased production.
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| An economic agenda we can call live with. |
• We are still discussing the idea
of trying to organize a conference on a pro-life economic agenda that would
appeal to both sides of the aisle on the issue, so to speak. We’ve been reaching out to key academics and
politicians in the Washington, DC metro area and thereabouts. There has been some positive feedback from
ordinary people, but academics and politicians (especially those of a liberal
bent) are a little conservative when it comes to getting out of their current
rut . . . er, paradigm, that is. Still,
we are moving forward as much as we can and as fast as we can.
• CESJ’s latest book, Easter Witness: From Broken Dream to a New
Vision for Ireland, is available from Amazon
and Barnes
and Noble, as well as by special order from many “regular” bookstores. The book can also be ordered in bulk, which
we define as ten copies or more of the same title, at a 20% discount. A full case is twenty-six copies, and
non-institutional/non-vendor purchasers get a 20% discount off the $20 cover
price on wholesale lots ($416/case).
Shipping is extra. Send enquiries
to publications@cesj.org. An additional discount may be available for
institutions such as schools, clubs, and other organizations as well as
retailers.
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| You need the Just Third Way, not a safety pin. |
• Here’s the usual announcement
about the Amazon Smile program,
albeit moved to the bottom of the page so you don’t get tired of seeing
it. To participate in the Amazon Smile
program for CESJ, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your account. (If you don’t have an account with Amazon,
you can create one by clicking on the tiny little link below the “Sign in using
our secure server” button.) Once you
have signed into your account, you need to select CESJ as your charity — and
you have to be careful to do it exactly this way: in the
space provided for “Or select your own charitable organization” type “Center for Economic and Social Justice
Arlington.” If you type anything
else, you will either get no results or more than you want to sift
through. Once you’ve typed (or copied
and pasted) “Center for Economic and
Social Justice Arlington” into the space provided, hit “Select” — and you
will be taken to the Amazon shopping site, all ready to go.
• As of this
morning, we have had visitors from 60 different countries and 47 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, Italy,
and South Africa. The most popular postings this past week in descending order
were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “The Purpose
of Production,” “News from the Network, Vol. 9, No. 42,” and “Introduction to
Solidarism.”
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#