News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 48

With a holiday to break up the week, you would think there would be less important news to report.  On the contrary, however, there is more — as the information about Dr. Noriko Arai demonstrates:

Happy Thanksgiving . . . For What It's Worth. . .

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  No, this is not a Beatles retrospective, but our annual Thanksgiving Day greeting to all our loyal readers.  We're making a lot of gains, but sometimes it just seems a little slow . . . like roasting a turkey or something. . . .

Pillars of a Just Market Economy

The three principles of economic justice as stated by Louis O. Kelso and Mortimer J. Adler in Chapter 5 of The Capitalist Manifesto (1958) are hardly radical.  They are, in fact, in full conformity with the natural law and the founding principles of the United States.  Nevertheless, they had been introduced into a society in which Keynesian economics and New Deal politics were as solidly embedded as unquestionable as the population theories of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus.

Why Keynesianism Promotes Waste and Consumerism

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, John Maynard Keynes established his reputation as the World’s Greatest Economist™ by employing the simple expedient of telling people what they wanted to hear, regardless how goofy it ended up being once it was examined.  Take, for example, his claim that the only way to finance new capital formation is by reducing consumption and accumulating the excess production in the form of money savings.

Monetary Reform and the Younger Set

From the usual faces one sees in the Just Third Way Global Justice Movement, it's easy to get the impression that it's a bunch of retired academics and politicians (when they're not already departed this world) with nothing of relevance to say about the modern world.  You might get a different impression after viewing this video from a few years ago:

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 47

As the holiday season gets into full swing and companies and countries start to think about year end statements and declarations, important events in the Just Third Way may sometimes get overlooked.  Here are a few we think should not:

Counterfeiting for Fun and Profit

The late economist Irving Fisher, considered by the late Milton Friedman to be the greatest late economist America ever produced (a remarkable statement by Friedman), once said something to the effect that inflation was the same as “legal counterfeiting.”  The late Paul Samuelson reportedly echoed this sentiment, although we have not be able to find the source for either Fisher or Samuelson.  It doesn’t matter, though, because we agree with it, at least up to a point.

Greed is Good! Deceit is Delightful!

And now for something completely different!  Every so often we’ve made a reference to Dr. Milton Friedman’s appearance on the Phil Donohue Show and his comment that “greed is good.”  It turns out that Friedman wasn’t the only economist advocating the goodness of greed and its benefits for the human race.

A Global Monetary Standard?

As we noted in the previous posting on this subject, occasionally we get questions from our readers the answers to which we think would make a good blog posting or two.  This particular set of questions came from someone in another country who wanted to know how we would go about establishing some kind of global standard for all the different currencies of the world.

Just Another Just Third Way Video

. . . or is it?  Today we bring you a video of the keynote speech given by Dr. Norman G. Kurland, president of the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) at the 2010 "Rally at the Fed", where a small band of concerned citizens attempted to tell increasingly deaf ears that the whole Keynesian paradigm is off-based, and only a system that truly respects the dignity of each and every human person, every child, every woman, and every man, has a chance of restructuring the social order in a more just manner without redistribution or other injustice:

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 46

With all the hoopla over politics and economics these days, you’d think there would be something with some substance to it, but all we see is the same-old-same-old that does not get to the root of any of the problems or exhibit any respect for human dignity.  In any event, here are this week’s news items:

A New Monetary Principle

Every so often we get a question from one of our readers that we can answer and get a new blog posting at the same time.  This one comes in response to someone in another country who wanted to know the basic principles of the new monetary system we propose under Capital Homesteading and other Just Third Way reforms.

The Slavery of Savings

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, John Maynard Keynes established his reputation with the publication in 1919 of The Economic Consequences of the Peace.  In the book he made the remarkable — and demonstrably false — statement that the world could not possibly have advanced to the stage of economic development it enjoyed before the outbreak of World War I had not ownership of capital been concentrated in the hands of a few people.

“Never” is a Long Time

Many people today deplore the consumerism and waste that permeates the developed world, and point out that if (other) people would just share what they have, consumerism would lessen its grip on the economy and waste could be eliminated.  That is true, but only up to a point.

Just Third Way Video:

Not too long ago a CESJ Fellow from Belgium put together a brief video explaining the Just Third Way using animation.  It's a little short, so for an added bonus we've included a repeat of another brief video, "People and Things:

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 45

It seems the closer we get to the end of the calendar year and the start of the holiday season, the harder it gets to find Just Third Way news items.  Everybody tends to put important things aside until after the holidays and as a result not only does nothing get done, nobody talks about it and there is nothing to report except about the things you are going to do, or at least hope to do.  Even so, we have a few news items:

The Pons Asinorum of Binary Economics

Today we address a problem that most (if not all) economists do not even think of as a problem — which may itself be the biggest problem of all.  How, after all, can you solve a problem that most people will not even agree exists?

The Rise of Socialism

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, the two fatal flaws in Keynesian economics (at least the two with which we are most concerned . . . today) are the idea that labor is responsible for all production and that past savings are essential to finance new capital formation.  These two assumptions are not exclusive to Keynesian economics, however.  They are also integral to the rise of capitalism — and socialism.

Say’s Law of Markets

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, under the Currency Principle “consumption” is divided into direct consumption by people, and indirect consumption to create capital instruments.  Under the Banking Principle, of course, consumption is consumption, it does not matter whether it is direct or indirect.

JTW Vlogcast: Is Greed a Virtue?

Back in 1979 Nobel Laurette Milton Friedman was on the Phil Donohue Show and made his (in)famous declaration that greed is good.  This has been taken ever since by libertarians and others as proof that capitalism beats socialism all hollow.  In the opinion of others, however, it does no such thing.

News from the Network, Vol. 12, No. 44

For some reason there seems to have been a focus on candy this week in addition to the usual horrors.  That was in spite of the fact that we did not run a single “Halloween Horror Special” this October, unless one includes the posting on Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick.  Be that as it may, here are some of the more Just Third Way-ish happenings this past week: