Friday, November 9, 2018

News from the Network, Vol. 11, No. 45


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#