We don’t need to comment on the
elections this week, since they were no surprise except in a few individual
cases. Overall, the mid-terms went about
as expected. Of much more importance for
the Just Third Way are the ongoing efforts at outreach, such as letters,
emails, telephone calls, etc., and attendance at conferences as speakers and
presenters. It is important for people
to realize that the CESJ core group cannot open their own doors — we need
people with contacts to use those contacts to open doors, e.g., as was done to
get the initial enabling legislation for the ESOP through, as described in “Dinner
at the Madison”:
 |
| Dr. Andrew Abela, CUA |
• Expanded Ownership Quote of the Year. This is not actually the
best expanded ownership quote from this year — which still has two months to
run, so we’re taking a bit of a chance, anyway — but the best expanded
ownership quote we’ve come across this year . . . so far. This is from Dr. Andrew Abela, former dean of
the School of Business and Economics at the Catholic University of America and
currently University Provost. It’s from
a blog posting on July 1, 2013, “Business Leaders
are Going John Galt”: “Earlier this year, CUA created its own
School of Business and Economics. One of the major motivators in creating the
School is the urgent need to re-propose to society that business is a moral
endeavor, that business leaders serve society by their very actions of creating
products and services, wealth and employment.
How can you help? By doing whatever you can to educate others on the
value and values of ownership. Do you have a successful business model? If so,
have you considered franchising as a way to grow your business without
additional capital investment on your part — and as a way to help others become
business owners? Do you have an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) so that
your employees can become owners too? Have you considered “spinning out” parts
of your business by selling ownership stakes to the management teams that run
them? The greater the proportion of
citizens who are owners and investors, the less ability others have to vilify
the business economy. The more people who understand how a culture of ownership
brings political and economic stability, the less temptation there will be to
attack business, and hopefully the less of a tendency to “go John Galt.”
 |
| Paying twice for a slice |
• Smithfield Foods, Inc.
Smithfield Foods, Inc., for which some years ago CESJ proposed a worker
buyout to keep the ownership in the United States, was purchased by the
Chinese. According to a report in today’s
Wall Street Journal, Smithfield Foods
is receiving a subsidy from the United States government to offset the effects
of the new tariffs. In other words,, the
U.S. taxpayer is paying China to offset the effect of higher prices to the U.S.
consumer.
 |
| Dr. Norman G. Kurland |
• McGill University Conference.
Norman Kurland, president of the interfaith Center for Economic and
Social Justice (CESJ), will be delivering the address at the “Liberty and
Agency in the Anthropocene: Economics for the Anthropocene” conference at
McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.
The conference will be held November 12 and 13, 2018, in the Ballroom of
the Thompson House. Norm’s address will
follow the general outline of “Binary
Economics in a Nutshell,” and the paper to be published in the
Proceedings will be “The Just Third Way: How We Can Create Green Growth, Widespread
Prosperity, and Global Peace.”
 |
| Yes, Saudi Arabia desperately needs U.S. silicone. |
• Saudi Arabian Financing. According to the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, much of the money for new
startups in Silicon Valley is still coming from Saudi Arabia. This may explain the reluctance in certain
quarters to make too great a fuss about certain recent events . . . which would
not be a problem if companies shifted to “future savings” to finance
replacement capital and expand operations, freeing up “past savings” to finance
startups and other risky ventures as well as for consumption, thereby also
decreasing the demand for unserviceable consumer credit. There would be no need of foreign financing,
especially if domestic consumer demand were to be enhanced by access to
ownership income as well as wage and welfare income on the part of the average
American through a
program of Capital Homesteading.
• Shop online and support CESJ’s work! Did you know that by making
your purchases through the Amazon Smile
program, Amazon will make a contribution to CESJ? Here’s how: First, go to https://smile.amazon.com/. Next, sign in to your Amazon 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.
• Blog Readership. We have had visitors from 34 different
countries and 42 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this
blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, the United
Kingdom, Brazil, India, and Canada. The
most popular postings this past week in descending order were “The
Just Third Way Podcast #41,” “News
from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 44,” “A Turning
Point,” “The
Oxford Malignants,” and “Misinterpreting
Utopia.”
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#