The media are still clogged with
politics and religion, which means that important items that have some bearing
on the Just Third Way get short shrift.
Since we haven’t been getting too many news items from our faithful
readers (that are fit to print, anyway), we have managed only a few short but
important items this week:
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| Cardinal Silvestrini, friend of CESJ |
• Death of Cardinal Silvestrini.
CESJ was saddened to learn of the death of Achille Cardinal
Silvestrini (1923-2019) of brain cancer
on August 29 of this year. His Eminence
served as Vatican Secretary of State for Internal Affairs and Prefect of the Congregation
for the Oriental Churches under Pope Saint John Paul II. He was instrumental in arranging CESJ’s two
audiences with John Paul II, and hosted CESJ’s 1992 seminar at the Vatican on
the role of private property in capital in combating global poverty. He invited the entire CESJ delegation to his
villa for a tea following the conclusion of the seminar for heads of religious
orders. The seminar led to the
publication of CESJ’s “small press bestseller” Curing World Poverty: The New
Role of Property (1994), free e-copies of which are available on
the CESJ website. CESJ is
currently exploring the possibility of offering a facsimili of the first
edition print on demand.
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| Dr. Robert Gervasi, President, Ohio Domincan |
• Article Newman. Dr. Robert
A. Gervasi, President of Ohio Dominican University in Columbus, Ohio, has
published an article on the upcoming canonization of John Henry Cardinal
Newman. The article, “The Idea
of a University,” appeared in the September 8, 2019 issue of The
Catholic Times, “The Diocese of Columbus’ News Source.” In addition to explaining a little about
Newman’s importance (necessarily very little, as conveying the true import of
Newman and his career is virtually impossible in a one-page article, even one
with small print), the article points out a small problem in Catholic Academia,
that also seems to afflict other Catholic institutions including parishes and
social clubs (and which we suspect other denominations and organizations deal
with as well): the belief that anyone who deviates from a particular party
line, or even fails to express sufficient enthusiasm for the party line, is not
a Real Catholic™. Self-appointed
inquisitors on both sides of the socio-political aisle somewhat misleading
labeled “liberal” and “conservative” are fond of making lists or declarations
that, e.g., “90% — or even 99.9999999999999% — of ‘Catholic’ (‘people’ who
‘disagree’ with ‘you’ are ‘always’ put in ‘quotes’) Colleges and Universities
Are No Longer Catholic, and What’s More Never Were.” Somewhere along the way the question of
whether or not something is true got misplaced.
• Social Security Reform. Yet another
proposal has surfaced for reform of the Social Security system to prevent
bankruptcy as projected in fifteen years.
As usual, the real problem is not addressed: the lack of productive
capacity other than by labor on the part of many Americans. The system is only tweaked, not really reformed,
viz. raising the age to receive full benefits so that people can work
longer. This, however, fails to address
the fact that most production of marketable goods and services is not the
result of labor, but of capital, and the situation is only getting worse as
technology advances. For example, if a
machine can do ten times the work of a human being, the human being still can’t
compete if he works twice as hard; the human being is then 20% as efficient as
the machine instead of just 10%. Then consider
the fact that most machinery is not merely ten times more productive than a
human being, but thousands of times more productive. Making people work 45 years instead of 40 is
not going to fix matters. The only
solution, as Louis Kelso pointed out more than half a century ago, is for as
many as possible of the people to own capital, supplementing and in some cases
replacing labor as the factor they contribute to production. One such proposal is Capital Homesteading.
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| Hong Kong Mask Law, what a gas. |
• Hong Kong Mask Law. Authorities in Hong Kong are reactivating an
old British colonial law that outlaws wearing masks in public in an effort to
stop protestors from wearing gas masks. When
protestors wear gas masks, it inhibits the effectiveness of tear gas in
dispersing crowds and interferes with facial recognition for future
prosecution. No word has been received
on whether the Hong Kong police will be prosecuted for shooting live ammunition
at protestors or whether the mainland government will be indicted for its human
rights violations, particularly Article 17 of the United Nations’ Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (which it signed and played a key role in writing) that
states every person has the right to own private property, individually or in
free association with others.
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| Zima . . . the Girly Man Drink |
• Pot Goes to Pot. Like,
totally bogus, Dude. It seems, like, you
know, uh, what were we talking about?
Got any M&Ms? Oh, yeah. It seems like Constellation Brands, Inc.,
took such a hit (in a bad trip kind of way) on their investment on
cannabis-based products that they’re trying to make up the losses by pushing alcoholic
seltzer water. Evidently Constellation
and the rest of the boozy fizz-water market that is temporarily in the
ascendant over beer learned nothing from Coors’ Zima fiasco. Evidently the feeling is still strong in
business as in politics that two wrongs make a right.
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| Well . . . maybe not THAT smile. . . . |
• 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 24 different
countries and 37 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this
blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Spain, Canada,
the United Kingdom, and the Philippines.
The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “News
from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 39,” “How
Commercial Banks Create Money,” “Repo Men?,” “Some
Thoughts on Fractional Reserve Banking,” and “Is
Liberty Diabolical?”
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.” Due to imprudent
language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled
comments.
#30#
