The Big Beautiful Boondoggle

 The trouble with even the biggest and most beautiful bill is that eventually you have to pay your bills, and the beauty of what you bought may have dimmed a bit by then.  We realize we’re committing a slight “fallacy of equivocation” by using a word meant in one sense in a different sense, but in this case it works.  We think.

Egocentrism, Tariffs, and the Single Tax, Part II

Last week we looked at how a distorted idea of one’s own importance can lead to treating anyone who opposes you as an enemy to be eliminated, and supporters as tools to be discarded once their utility is over.  This week we look at the implications of the Ricardian (as opposed to the Smithian) Labor Theory of Value.

Trump’s Rising Tide

Time and the tide wait for no man.  Neither are they subject to the command of a man.

Before it became politically incorrect to suggest a ruler might not be all-powerful or the State might not be a “Mortall God” à la Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, every schoolchild knew the story of King Chanute and the ocean.  Or maybe it was King Canute.  Or it could have been Cnut.  Or Knut.  Or Knute.  No need to come to wreck on this Rockne.

Scrooge and the Virtue of Being Rich, Part II

In the previous, Christmas Day posting on this subject, we noted there was a significant difference between Ebenezer Scrooge and the rich of today.  Scrooge, for all his faults — and his unsuspected, if very real virtues! — did not seek wealth as an end in itself.  True, as Dickens portrayed him, Scrooge was —

Some Comments on Social Credit

In China, the social credit system (SCS) is a national reputation system that rates the trustworthiness of individuals, businesses, and government entities.  The idea is to regulate social behavior and ensure compliance with laws and regulations.  The SCS assigns a score to each entity, with higher scores leading to more benefits and lower scores leading to more penalties.  High scores can lead to tax breaks, jumping the public housing queue, and easier access to credit.  Low scores can lead to denial of licenses and permits, exclusion from booking flights or high-speed train tickets, and restricted access to public services . . . all based on some bureaucrat’s idea of how good a person you are.  It’s a fun and easy way to have your life ruined.

The Theory of Certitude

Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Socialism as promoted by Robert Owen, Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, François-Marie-Charles Fourier, and others, sought to abolish traditional concepts of private property, marriage and family, and religion.  In their place would be new institutions that might go by the same name and even have the same outward form as the old institutions (Saint-Simon, for instance, called his system, “the New Christianity”), but the substance would be completely different.

The Age of Revolution

Today’s blog posting is adapted from the book, Economic Personalism, which you can get free from the CESJ website, or from Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

To oversimplify somewhat, three revolutions have led to the alienation of most people from the institutions of the common good by stripping them of power. The first two did this almost inadvertently by limiting access to social and technological tools, while the third did it by the nature of the change itself. These were,

Was Henry George a Socialist?

In a recent email, someone stated, “Henry George was definitely NOT a Socialist.  Quite the contrary.  He wanted to untax labour and capital, treat land rents as the source of public revenue and restore the mediaeval system of financing the Crown through land rents.”

America’s Prince of Lunacy

You’ve probably noticed that the moment you think you’ve heard it all, somebody is bound to show up and prove you wrong.  For example, if you ever thought that today’s academics and politicians were crazier than bedbugs and nobody in history, except maybe Caligula and a few other loony toons, could match them.

Does Vladimir Putin REALLY Believe This?

 

Analyses of Putin’s annexation of Crimea, funding insurgency in the Donbas, and the current “special military operation” in Ukraine have been hampered by the fact that no one, including Putin, seems to know why it was started and what it is supposed to achieve, at least on a permanent or consistent basis.  Was it to liberate ethnic Russians?  Respond to NATO aggression?  Acquire territory?  De-nazify and de-militarize Ukraine?  Make Russia great again?  Or some other excuse?

Vladimir Putin and the New Christianity

 

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s worldview is not entirely connected with reality, i.e., does not constitute “truth.”   Truth, of course, means conformity with reality.  Anytime you hear someone prating of a higher truth that goes beyond reality, he (or she) is lying, is mistaken, or is simply ignorant.

The Fatal Omission

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, there was a movement in the early nineteenth century to broaden the base of capital ownership throughout society.   This was justified based on individual human dignity (Cobbett), economic stability (Morrison), and as a counter to the spread of the “New Things” of modernism and socialism (the Catholic Church).

The Road to Limited Liability

In the previous posting on this subject, we saw that even if ordinary people had sufficient savings during the Industrial Revolution, or even if they had gained access to the commercial and central banking system in England, broad-based ownership of the new industries would have been much too risky under the law of the time to allow it.

More Than an Individual Problem

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, life in the early nineteenth century had thrown a lot of curves at most people in the form of massive social, economic and political change, and the institutions of the social order were not keeping up.  Instead, radicals were calling for the abolition of all old institutions, such as private property, organized religion, and marriage and family, and their replacement with what was called by many names, but with one substance: socialism.

Making the Best of a Bad Situation

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, Charles Dickens’s character Ebenezer Scrooge turns out not to have been so much a bad man, but an incomplete person.  Once he accepted grace and “converted” to personalism, as Dickens put it, “He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.”

Scrooge v. the Socialists

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted how, in contrast to today’s super-rich, and traditional capitalists and socialists, when Ebenezer Scrooge saw the light (and the three spirits), and became charitable, he didn’t call it “justice” and he used his own money.  He also didn’t consciously control Bob Cratchit, despite the fact that the system of the time pretty much forced employees into a condition of dependency, which a master could make burdensome or easy.  Naturally, many masters really rubbed their employees’ noses in it, as they knew their employees were inferior beings or they would have been in charge . . . right?

The Honesty of Ebenezer

In the previous posting on this subject, we noted that Ebenezer Scrooge, the, er, hero (or maybe “victim”?) of Charles Dickens’s 1843 story “A Christmas Carol” was portrayed as a strictly honest man, despite later dramatic characterizations that made him seem like a minor Robber Baron or major sneak thief.  Scrooge’s iron rectitude is, in fact, essential to the plot, as otherwise Dickens’s story could have been dismissed (at least within the context of the fictional world) as a lie or a delusion.

An Unexpected Christmas Message

No, really, it’s still Christmas.  Despite the common belief that “the Christmas Season” starts the day after Thanksgiving (or, for some, after Independence Day) and runs until 9:00 am on December 25, Christmas actually begins at sundown on December 24 and runs for the next dozen days . . . although we’re off the hook regarding gifts, unless you include or hold off until January 6.

Ryan, Coughlin, and the New Deal

As we saw in the previous posting on this subject, we saw that the New Deal really had nothing to do with any natural law-based approach to social thought, or even “supernatural law” approach, either, if we accept Dorothy Day’s strictures about the dangers of giving “Holy Mother, the State” such overwhelming power.

The Right Reverend New Dealer

 

To this day there are people who insist that the “New Deal” of Franklin Delano Roosevelt not only saved the United States from the Great Depression (ahem, Part III, there having been two previous phases, the first from 1873 to 1878, the second from 1893 to 1898), it was also THE perfect social program and should be duplicated today as in (for example) the so-called “Green New Deal.”