JTW Podcast: America’s Road Not Taken

The full title of today’s podcast is “America’s Road Not Taken: George Mason, Louis Kelso, and the Means to Own the Future.”  By any title, however, the script traces how George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights adopted June 12, 1776, influenced Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence while not omitting the necessity of grounding liberty in “the means of acquiring and possessing property.”

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 26

In this week’s news notes, we go from the less than sublime to the more than ridiculous.  We will only allude to the SpaceX IPO in the first news item, but the rest of the gleanings from this week aren’t much better, at least from the standpoint of human dignity.  The only real question is when the powers-that-be are going to get their collective acts together and push for adoption of the Economic Democracy Act:

Alan Greenspan and the Ownership Divide

The recent passing of Alan Greenspan triggered a moment or two of reflection regarding his position on the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, particularly the recommended monetary reforms which have been covered at some length on this blog.  Principally (at least so far as this discussion is concerned) this involves the realization — an integral feature of binary economics — that savings (essential for new capital investment) — can and do consist of both past reductions in consumption and future increases in production.

JTW Podcast: When Too Few Own the Wealth of Nations

Today’s podcast argues that concentrated ownership of productive wealth creates economic, political, and social crises by starving consumer purchasing power, encouraging speculation, and market dominance. and turning economic power into political control. As automation and AI shift gains to a small ownership elite, increasing inequality fuels social breakdown, overwhelms welfare systems, and makes inherited wealth outweigh earned success. Meanwhile, poor countries remain trapped, and trade imbalances worsen.

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 25

    At this turning point in history — as if all points in history weren’t turning points of one kind or another — there seems to be increasing emphasis on form over substance, and even the few who focus on substance don’t know what to do except change the form in many cases, cross their fingers (and eyes) and hope for the best.  Of course, if people were really interested in substantial change and improvements, they would push for adoption of the Economic Democracy Act:

The Ungodly Have No Rights . . . Right?

In the previous posting on this subject, we looked at the question whether Jesus, whom Christians consider a divine person, was also a human person.  We decided that — whether you believe him to be divine, he was human, and therefore necessarily a person.

JTW Podcast: Is Distributism a Genuine Third Way?

    Today’s podcast is a libertarian take on “distributism,” the system promoted by G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.  It raises some interesting points, but (in our opinion) it does so without actually leaving the current paradigm which fails to take future savings into consideration.  It does, however, have a good discussion on private property and the conflict between ownership, use, the absolute natural right to property (the generic right of dominion), and the necessarily limited and socially determined rights of property (the universal destination of all goods) . . . which is not adequately addressed.

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 24

Time again for another round of how much better things would be if we just got our acts together and adopted the Economic Democracy Act as soon as possible . . . otherwise known as the weekly news roundup:

The Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Just Third Way

This coming Friday, June 12, 2026, is the 250^th anniversary of the adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the first article of which is generally consistent with the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism: “That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”

JTW Podcast: Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Project Economic Justice

In 1985, Center for Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) members initiated and mobilized bipartisan support for Congressional legislation which established the Presidential Task Force on Project Economic Justice under President Ronald Reagan. Project Economic Justice, which was first conceived in a strategy paper authored by CESJ, offered a revolutionary economic alternative to military solutions to regional conflicts in Central America and the Caribbean.

News from the Network, Vol. 19, No. 23

Some of the news items this week relate directly to the Just Third Way of Economic Personalism, so we will start off with those.  Otherwise, don’t expect anything too different from what has been happening and which increases the reasons for adopting the Economic Democracy Act as soon as possible:

A Certain Personality

    A short time ago we got into an incredibly pointless argument on FaceBook which began when someone made the somewhat “interesting” remark that because Jesus, whom Christians regard as a divine person, was a convicted felon, then no one should have any problems with the current president of the United States.

JTW Podcast: Why Kelso Invented the Leveraged Buyout

Why Louis Kelso Invented the ESOP LBO: Capital Ownership, Jobs, and the Great Depression.  In today’s podcast, Louis O. Kelso (via an AI voice) recounts how witnessing the Great Depression as a teenager led him to investigate why a resource-rich economy could still produce mass unemployment and suffering. He concludes that a key free-market assumption traced to Adam Smith is wrong: real production and income come not only from labor but also from capital, whose technological rise has reduced labor’s relative share while capital ownership remains concentrated.