If you can take time from the weekly FPF — Friday Phone Frenzy (that more and more consists of spam calls instead of people making last minute calls before the week ends) — or making a four-day weekend out of a three-day one, you might find this week’s news items of particular interest:
• Help Joe Walk Again for Economic Justice. Just a reminder, if you haven’t already done so, to visit the GoFundMe campaign and consider making a contribution and spreading word out among your social media networks. It’s off to a good start, but it’s still just a start.
Andrew Yang
• Andrew Yang for the Just Third Way? Obviously, we can’t commit anybody to support of the Just Third Way, but the fact that the core group of CESJ is meeting with a representative of Andrew Yang’s organization today is encouraging. Does meeting with someone’s representative mean you agree with everything he says, or he accepts what you say? Of course not, nor do we agree with everything Yang says. It does, however, show a willingness to listen, which fewer and fewer people these days find themselves unable to do. Can you imagine Biden and Trump sitting down for a friendly chat or to see if there is any common ground on which they can meet? Somehow, we think not.
• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and the Just Third Way. Rick Osbourne and Dev Rammireddy are writing a white paper on how a DAO, or “Decentralized Autonomous Organization,” might be used to advance the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism. One of the possibilities being explored is the development of an online game as a way to demonstrate how the Just Third Way could work in an economy, a sort of econometric model. One possibility being discussed is an “anti-monopoly game,” the idea to take the situation found in the popular board game, Monoply, and correct the flaws so that everyone can own without taking advantage of anyone else. Interestingly, the original version of Monopoly was called “the Landlord Game,” and it was developed by followers of the agrarian socialist Henry George to demonstrate the evils of private ownership of land, railroads, and utilities. What many people don’t know is that the Landlord Game had two parts, the first part in which ownership became concentrated, and the second part that turned everything socialist. The second part was boring, so Parker Brothers only bought the rights to the first part. What Rick and Dev want to do is come up with a “second part” that is actually interesting and not socialist.
• Socialists and Capitalists: Beware the Ides of March! Word is getting out. The book by CESJ’s own Michael D. Greaney (Director of Research) and Dawn K. Brohawn (Director of Communications) from TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, is scheduled for release March 15, 2022. While the book is written from a “Catholic” perspective — the publisher is, after all, a Catholic publisher — it is natural law-based and applies to everyone, even those without any declared faith or philosophy. If you order direct from the publisher, TAN Books, they make more money and will be more likely to do more JTW books in the future. If you insist, you can order from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but be sure to leave extremely laudatory reviews once you’ve read it.
• Biden and Inflation. Given the fact that inflation is at the highest point in more than a generation, President Biden is beginning to think inflation might be a problem. Per the Keynesian paradigm, of course, it’s not real inflation, as we have not yet reached “full employment,” so a rise in the price level is due to “other factors,” as Keynes put it . . . neglecting to mention that “inflation” means “a rise in the price level.” There is a solution, of course, which is to abandon reliance on failed Keynesian policy that has never worked and doesn’t even make sense (inflation that’s inflation except when it isn’t?), and go with “the economics of reality: the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism found in the Economic Democracy Act. As binary economics (the economics of reality) is based on a different — and correct — principle and theory of money than Keynesian, Monetarist or Austrian economics, it is possible, even preferable to have an economy characterized by a limited economic role for the State, free and open markets, restoration of the rights of private property (especially in corporate equity, and — what the three mainstream schools of economics struggle with — expanded capital ownership . . . and no inflation, deflation, or unemployment, defining “full employment” as anyone who wants a job can have one and at the same time gain an aderquate and secure income regardless what he or she does as a “job.”
• Plus and Minus. On the plus side, Americans now know that the capital of Canada is Ottawa. On the minus side, incredible effort is being expended without people realizing their not making the right demand: economic power to every citizen through expanded capital ownership. Own or be owned.
• Hortense and Her Whos. In case you’ve been wondering how you might advance the Just Third Way by introducing it to legislators at any and all levels of government, we’ve made it easy for you, with the “Hortense Hears Three Whos“ initiative. Visit the explanatory website, and consider downloading the postcard to send to people in government. Don’t worry if you think they won’t be open to it, as the postcard is intended to get them to open their eyes.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication, Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, has been created and can be accessed by clicking on this link. Everyone is encouraged to visit the page and send the link out to their networks.
• Economic Personalism. When you purchase a copy of Economic Personalism: Property, Power and Justice for Every Person, be sure you post a review after you’ve read it. It is available on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble at the cover price of $10 per copy. You can also download the free copy in .pdf available from the CESJ website. If you’d like to order in bulk (i.e., ten or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to publications@cesj.org for details. CESJ members get a $2 rebate per copy on submission of proof of purchase. Wholesale case lots of 52 copies are available at $350, plus shipping (whole case lots ONLY). Prices are in U.S. dollars.
• Sensus Fidelium Videos, Update. CESJ’s series of videos for Sensus Fidelium are doing very well, with over 155,000 total views. The latest Sensus Fidelium video is “The Five Levers of Change.” The video is part of the series on the book, Economic Personalism. The latest completed series on “the Great Reset” can be found on the “Playlist” for the series. The previous series of sixteen videos on socialism is available by clicking on the link: “Socialism, Modernism, and the New Age,” along with some book reviews and other selected topics. For “interfaith” presentations to a Catholic audience they’ve proved to be popular, edging up to 150,000 views to date. They aren’t really “Just Third Way videos,” but they do incorporate a Just Third Way perspective. You can access the playlist for the entire series The point of the videos is to explain how socialism and socialist assumptions got such a stranglehold on the understanding of the role of the State and thus the interpretation of Catholic social teaching, and even the way non-Catholics and even non-Christians understand the roles of Church, State, and Family, and the human person’s place in society.
• 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 30 different countries and 33 states, provinces, and territories in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past week. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and India. The most popular postings this past week in descending order were “A New Philosophy of Money,” “News from the Network, Vol. 15, No. 04,” “Activism v. Leadership,” “An Unexpected Christmas Message,” and “Can You Imagine?”
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.
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