Friday, April 26, 2013

News from the Network, Vol. 6, No. 17


One thing we’ve noticed from the responses to this blog and to CESJ books and lectures is that few people really understand two institutions basic to any society: private property and money.  The problem is that modern economic theory has made these two things so complicated that their very simplicity comes across to some people as some odd, possibly even sinister.

Put your mind at ease.  There is nothing sinister about either private property or money.  It is love of money, that is, putting too much importance on it and obsessing about it, that is the root of all evil, not money itself.  Given that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” perhaps all we need is for more people to be able to participate in money creation to buy their own capital for them to stop putting so much of the wrong kind of emphasis on it.

That’s why, perhaps, we should all be working for the passage of a Capital Homestead Act:

• We just returned from the annual Rally at the Federal Reserve.  Dr. Robert Brantley served as Master of Ceremonies and gave the opening prayer and closing benediction.  Naturally we’re all exhausted (because of the event, not Bob’s prayer. . . ).  Except (of course) for perpetual motion machine Norman Kurland, who was the Keynote Speaker.  His talk outlined thoughts through history on private property in capital, from the Jewish, Christian, Islamic and even pagan tradition.

• This writer gave a brief description of the purposes for which the Federal Reserve was established: to furnish the country with an “elastic” asset-backed currency that was uniform and stable by rediscounting qualified paper for agriculture, commerce and industry.  There was also the relatively minor task of retiring the old debt-backed currency and replacing it with asset-backed currency — which was soon derailed as the federal government began financing its deficits using the money creation powers of the Federal Reserve.

• Dr. Scott Holmes gave a rendition of “16 Bills” after a couple of drum and flute sets orchestrated by Jerry Peloquin, one-time founding drummer of the Jefferson Airplane group and developer of the Family Fish Farms Network concept.

• Dr. Robert Ornelas, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of California, was there with his Christian Hip-Hop group, the SOG Crew.  They were very well received by the crowd.

• Dave Hamill from Georgia gave a rousing speech urging his fellow Evangelical Christians to join with the Jews, Catholics and Muslims in supporting Capital Homesteading.

• Tomorrow is the CESJ annual celebration and board meeting.  I would probably have a lot more to put in these news items, except I’m very tired, and I still have to bake my special pumpkin bread for the meeting tomorrow, and make 72 deviled eggs.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 58 different countries and 52 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. People in El Salvador, Pakistan, Qatar, Portugal, and Singapore spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past week were “Thomas Hobbes on Private Property,” “Aristotle on Private Property,” “Social Justice IV: The Characteristics of Social Justice,” “Some Thoughts on Money, II: The Different Schools of Thought,” and “The Greatest Danger to Religion Today.”

Those are the happenings for this week, at least 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 anyway, so we’ll see it before it goes up.

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