Again, this week’s news items illustrate what we think is a growing divide between reality and what the powers-that-be would like to be the case. As the Roman poet Horace said, however, you can chase Nature — reality — out with a pitchfork, but she always comes back. To avoid having to try and create your own reality and become more truthful (truth, after all, means conformity with reality), people need the power to become virtuous, and — as we have repeated early and often on this blog, quoting Daniel Webster — “Power naturally and necessarily follows property.” That being the case, the obvious thing for the powers-that-be to do is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act:
• A Just Third Way Poem. Every now and then we get a contribution difficult to categorize, but that we think you should be aware of, anyway. This past week we received a poem from faithful reader Jim Aulenti, and so we lead off with that:
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| Eric Vaughan |
• Robots Don’t Buy Automobiles. As reported in an article in Fortune magazine, “In early 2023, convinced generative AI was an “existential” transformation, [Eric] Vaughan looked at his [IgniteTech] team and saw a workforce not fully on board. His ultimate response: He ripped the company down to the studs, replacing nearly 80% of staff within a year, according to headcount figures reviewed by Fortune.” And the point of the article is that Vaughan has no regrets: “2 years later, he says he’d do it again.” The problem, of course, is obvious, at least if you stop to think about it. As then-UAW president Walter Reuther told a Ford executive when touring an automated Ford plant in response to a joke that Reuther would have a hard time collection union dues from the robots, “You’ll have an even harder time selling them automobiles.” You can produce as much of whatever you want, but if you can’t sell it to someone, what good is it? As Adam Smith pointed out 250 years ago in The Wealth of Nations (1776), “Consumption is the sole end and purpose of production.” It’s all very well to meet the challenge of AI by eliminating anyone who opposes it or is not sufficiently enthusiastic about it, but people without jobs are often people without income and cannot purchase goods and services for consumption. The solution, of course, is that if you want to consume, you must be able to produce . . . and as Jean-Baptiste Say noted, if you can’t produce with labor, you must produce with capital, and to own the capital if you want the income. The way to do that is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act.
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| The President's New Economy |
• Declining Economic Wellbeing. Once again cribbing from an article from Fortune magazine, we discover that despite enthusiastic encomia bestowed on the economy by the current administration in Washington, “Everyday Americans certainly feel the effects of economic shocks that are captured in the headline statistics, but there are many reasons why an improvement in those headline numbers doesn’t map to an improvement in a household’s financial situation.” You think? As has been stressed many times on this blog, if you want to consume, you must produce (absent redistribution as a way of life, which tends to be self-defeating), and with people being forced out of production by advancing technology, the problem is only going to get worse. What’s the solution? Adopt the Economic Democracy Act.
• Well-Off Not So Well-Off. Not that we’re particularly enamored of Fortune magazine, it’s just that it keeps reporting things we would like to draw to your attention . . . at least until somebody, somewhere adopts the Economic Democracy Act. Another recent article laments the sad story of white-collar workers making the magical six-figure income. As reported, “A weakening labor market spells trouble for white-collar workers. In these sectors, while unemployment hasn’t surged, hiring has essentially been frozen for the past year, especially for entry-level roles, as firms juggle worries over economic uncertainty and AI fears. Anxiety over job loss is rife among white-collar employees, and those concerns might now be manifesting in the data.” The fact is, for the past two and a half centuries it has been painfully obvious that advancing productive technology has been replacing human labor from the production process at an accelerating rate. The only solution is to adopt the Economic Democracy Act.
• Collapsing European Pensions. More people taking out than are paying in, and many taking out far more than they ever put in. This short, 9-minute video, €400B Pension Collapse, tells a chilling story that need not be quite so terrifying IF the powers-that-be if they would bother to adopt the Economic Democracy Act, which was designed specifically with this contingency in mind.
• Semi-Worker Ownership. We heard an unverified rumor that KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.) is a major global investment firm managing alternative assets, is taking a significant position in worker-owned companies . . . meaning that the companies are no longer 100% worker-owned — and that raises some serious questions about the paradox of destroying the very thing you are trying to preserve. You see, as studies by the National Center for Employee Ownership in Oakland, California, have demonstrated, 100% worker-owned companies that have profit-sharing, participatory management, and rights of ownership typically out-perform otherwise comparable firms by 150%. Some of this is due to the tax advantages of certain forms of worker ownership (e.g., a Subchapter S corporation that is 100% owned by its workers through an ESOP pays no corporate income tax), but the primary factor is generally held to be ownership itself reinforced by the rights of ownership . . . which does not carry over when outside investors grab a piece of the ownership. Not that outside ownership is bad or anything, but the interests of outside investors are different than those of workers. This was seen even in 100% worker-owned companies that allowed retirees to retain shares after leaving the company, such as the near-legendary Fastener Industries in Berea, Ohio. We report this without offering a solution, but it is a problem that will have to be faced with the adoption of the Economic Democracy Act.
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| Dilbert |
• Scott Adams, R.I.P. If you didn’t know (and it’s no shame not to), Scott Adams was the creator of “Dilbert,” the hero (if that is the word we want) of a comic strip focusing on office humor, mocking pointless management trends, absurd company policies, and clueless bosses. Leaving out whatever we think of Adams’s politics or anything else (including his real views of modern corporate life), we can take Dilbert as a metaphor or maybe a “bas-phor” to coin a term that will probably never circulate, for the pointlessness of modern existence. (As we said, this probably has nothing to do with what Adams was really trying to do.) As a bas-phor — meta —means transcending or expanding or something like that — Dilbert gives too narrow a vision of what corporate (or any) life could and should be. People don’t have to be powerless and trapped in a pointless existence under the control of others just to make a living or even just to survive. Given that (as Daniel Webster said), “Power naturally and necessarily follows property,” the answer to Dilbert is not surrender or quiet desperation, but to adopt the Economic Democracy Act.
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| Just lie for a century and you will fool yourself |
• Saying It Doesn’t Make It So. Nearly a century ago, John Maynard Keynes declared that all we had to do was lie to ourselves for at least a century for his system to start working. As Milord Keynes said, “For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.” (John Maynard Keynes, “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”, 1930, republished in his collection, Essays in Persuasion. London: Macmillan and Co., 1931.) How well that has worked is obvious to anyone who bothers to look; you cannot build a stable or even a coherent social order on deliberate lies, knowing all the while they are lies! That is why we are forced to take President Trump’s declaration that the United States in the midst of an “economic boom” with a few tons of salt. Simply saying it does not make it so, or Keynesian economics wouldn’t need a century of lying to function — and still not deliver as advertised. It borders on the delusional to continue adhering to a system that has been proven not to work and has only made matters worse. As for evidently believing one can change reality just by making a declaration or issuing an order, you can make up your own mind. Once you do, of course, you will want to push for the adoption of the Economic Democracy Act so that the social order as well as the economy can return to some semblance of sanity.
• Surge of Bankruptcies. Despite the intrusion of reality, the present administration in Washington insists that things are just peachy, economically speaking. Why, then, as reported in an article from CBS News, are bankruptcies “surging”? As noted in the article, “New data shows more Americans are filing for bankruptcy, the latest indication that price pressures and an uneven economy are leaving some households strapped for cash. Total consumer bankruptcy filings jumped 12% from 478,752 in 2024 to 533,949 in 2025, according to Epiq AACER, a platform that provides U.S. bankruptcy filing data. Epiq, which tracks Chapter 7, Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 filings, relies on data provided through the U.S. Courts' PACER system, an electronic database that houses federal court records.” The answer is not to try and reduce prices, but to increase income . . . which means making people productive again, not figuring out ways to redistribute income from one group to another. And that, of course, means adopting the Economic Democracy Act.
• More on Housing, By HEC. We covered this before, but President Trump seems to think that prohibiting corporations from owning single family dwellings will bring down the price. That may not be the case, as this article in Yahoo! Finance suggests. What is the real solution? It would be a good idea to try out the Homeowners Equity Corporation (HEC), which might possibly be implemented under current, and later integrated as part of the Economic Democracy Act.
• Greater Reset “Book Trailers”. We have produced two ninety-second “Book Trailers” for distribution (by whoever wants to distribute them), essentially minute-and-a-half commercials for The Greater Reset. There are two versions of the videos, one for “general audiences” and the other for “Catholic audiences”. Take your pick.
• The Greater Reset. CESJ’s book by members of CESJ’s core group, The Greater Reset: Reclaiming Personal Sovereignty Under Natural Law is, of course, available from the publisher, TAN Books, an imprint of Saint Benedict Press, and has already gotten a top review on that website. It can also be obtained from Barnes and Noble, as well as Amazon, or by special order from your local “bricks and mortar” bookstore. The Greater Reset is the only book of which we’re aware on “the Great Reset” that presents an alternative instead of simply warning of the dangers inherent in a proposal that is contrary to natural law. It describes reality, rather than a Keynesian fantasy world. Please note that The Greater Reset is NOT a CESJ publication as such, and enquiries about quantity discounts and wholesale orders for resale must be sent to the publisher, Saint Benedict Press, NOT to CESJ.
• Economic Personalism Landing Page. A landing page for CESJ’s latest publication (now with an imprimatur), 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., 52 or more copies) at the wholesale price, send an email to info@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 persons place in society.
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 well see that it gets into the next “issue.” Due to imprudent and intemperate language on the part of some commentators, we removed temptation and disabled comments.
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