News from the Network, Vol. 4, No. 47

There are some very interesting things happening in Ireland right now. The "Irish Executives Network" (below) just had a contest to solicit suggestions on how to "inspire Ireland" to get out of the current economic malaise. We, of course, got our entry in as "Equity Expansion International, Inc.," which (as you know) is the for-profit business that works to implement Just Third Way structural reforms in companies, states/provinces, countries and regions.

Ireland is, frankly (aside from the U.S.), almost the ideal place to implement Capital Homesteading. Ireland and the U.S. share a common language (although it does seem to sound better coming from them), have similar legal systems, culture, and so on. Ireland is part of the European Union, but is uniquely positioned to serve as a model for both Europe and the Americas, having ties pretty much around the globe.

Do we expect to win? Define "win." The contest was clearly directed toward individual business endeavors, while EEI's "product" is restructuring an entire economy. We're thus in a "win-win" situation. If we don't get a prize, that's okay — we'll settle for having been given the chance to present the Just Third Way as a possible solution to what troubles Ireland (and the rest of us) to some people who just might be in a position to do something constructive. We did get to a TD (a legislator) a while back, but a scandal broke and there was no follow-up. Fortunately, the caliber of people we've seen in the Irish Executives Network can't help but see the advantages of applying Just Third Way reforms to the Irish economy by adopting Capital Homesteading — thereby showing the U.S. how it's done.

We should, in fact, win by losing. The people running the contest are clearly going to feel so bad about giving the prizes to other people and organizations that they'll study the Just Third Way and Capital Homesteading far more intensely than they otherwise would have. Then they'll just have to pick up the phone and give Norman Kurland a call — contact information on the website. (If he can spend hours on the phone talking to Labour Party people in London and South Africa, and days tramping around Capitol Hill dropping in on various Congressmen and Senators, he can give the Irish equal time.)

Not that Ireland is our sole focus. Here's what else we've been doing this past week:

• As noted above, EEI entered the "Inspire Ireland" contest run by Irish Executives Network. This LinkedIn group — and a significant number of others — exhibit to a high degree the organizing for social justice for which Pope Pius XI called in Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Divini Redemptoris (1937). A good "handbook" for this kind of thing is available for free from CESJ in .pdf: CESJ co-founder Father William Ferree's Introduction to Social Justice (1948). Get yours today.

• The Irish certainly seem to be waking up to the need for acts of social justice (which we hope they will be communicating to their "separated brethren" in the U.S.) We are preparing a piece for possible profiling (in a good way) in the "Irish Abroad" LinkedIn group. It should be ready for submission next week.

• CESJ had a meeting of the core group of the Coalition for Capital Homesteading. The focus was on the need to come up with some "emotional" points to sign the petition for the U.S. Congress (or any other legislature, city council, civic or religious group around the globe, for that matter) to adopt a (non-binding) resolution in support of the Declaration of Monetary Justice. There is also a need for each member of the Coalition to come up with three possible "action items" to further the cause of economic justice for all.

• To our great pleasure, we heard this past week from John Moorehouse, founder, publisher and editor of the Catholic Men's Quarterly that has been on hiatus for the past couple of years. He's back, and getting the magazine back on track. He also has some interesting ideas that groups can use for fundraising. His orientation is clearly Catholic, but other groups might find the old "Classic Comics" (remember them?) both interesting and useful for fundraising purposes. Here's the link to his organization.

• We're putting the revision of Capital Homesteading for Every Citizen aside for a couple of months. There are relatively few areas that need a little "tweaking," such as some of the language and explanation about money, credit, banking and finance, and some of the rough projections should be updated, but the principles are there, and can easily be adapted to any economy in the world. We'll be focusing on getting the English revision of Curing World Poverty up and running, from which the current Chinese translation will be corrected, and then published by an academic press in China.

• We have a meeting scheduled next week with an official from one of the local universities to discuss putting CESJ's core group in touch with academics, legislators and various good-people-to-be-in-touch-with. It should be a very productive meeting.

• Norman Kurland received Thanksgiving greetings from the Polish journalist with ties to Poland's central bank who interviewed him a while back for a feature article in a Warsaw newspaper, who reported a short time ago that the former head of the central bank had been investigating Capital Homesteading monetary and tax reforms and was impressed with them. This is particularly interesting in that last week the Wall Street Journal reported that Poland has avoided the "recession," has kept its public debt down to 55% of GDP, and is looking to reduce it further, at the same time focusing on providing liquidity to the private sector instead of government to finance growth.

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 56 different countries and 51 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, the UK, Canada, Bulgaria, and Australia. People in Australia, India, Germany, Singapore, and Austria spent the most average time on the blog. The most popular postings this past week were "Thomas Hobbes on Private Property," "It's the Academics v. the Politicians . . . v. Economic Reality, Part I: Accounting," "How Joe Lunchbucket Could Get Money for Capital Homesteading," "Aristotle on Private Property," and "The Keynesian Multiplier."

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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