But Is He More Popular Than the Beatles?

An editorial in Politiken, Denmark’s largest newspaper, states that Obama is greater then Jesus. And if you are perplexed by this remark, The Reformed Pastor, David Fishchler helps you understand the logic:

There’s not a hint of satire there that I can see. They seem to be quite serious: they believe that Obama has several nation or world-changing accomplishments to his name… while Jesus…doesn’t. The “marginal Jew” did a few parlor tricks that might have helped a few people, and He said some lovely things, but get real. The One is saving the world, stopping the oceans’ rise, ending poverty and ensuring world peace. What did Jesus ever do that can compare with that?

Nuff said. Happy New Year!

The Economic Stork

The answers we get are dictated by the questions we ask, but there was one question which always grated on my wife's nerves, no matter who frequently she was asked. That was the question, “Do you work?” As she had five small children and a husband (or, as some would reckon it, six children), she did quite a bit of work. But what the questioner really meant was, “Do you work for a wage?” Being a “housewife” (a term which seems to designate someone wedded to a house) carried no status at all; only work in exchange for wages could have any value, precisely the value of the wage. Work that has no wage has no value.

But we cannot blame the average person for asking this question when the economists have no better understanding of the family and no better questions to ask. Modern economics is a theory about how individuals exchange goods and services, but it has no explanation of how these goods come into being in the first place; that is, it has no coherent production function. Exchange theories deal merely with the change of ownership of already existing goods among freely contracting individuals; it can never explain the appearance of new goods. In these theories, everything is treated as a commodity (even the human person gets commodified as “labor”) but the actual existence of these commodities cannot be explained. But of all the “commodities” whose existence economics cannot explain, the first is the existence of the individual. And without such a explanation, how can economics understand the growth of the economy?

John Mueller of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has characterized these shortcomings as “The Economic Stork Theory” (EST). Mueller explains this theory in Redeeming Economics: Rediscovering the Missing Element, which will be published this Spring by ISI Books. In the Economic Stork Theory, workers arrive in the economy fully grown, fully trained, and fully socialized. These stork-borne workers are a “given”; that is, there is no way to explain the growth in workers or their level of training and socialization, and hence little reason to support them with political or fiscal policies. Mueller describes the theory as follows:

I call this the Stork Assumption, since it literally means that adult workers spring from nowhere, as if brought by a large Economic Stork. Under the Stork Assumption, the accumulation of workers’ tools—buildings and machines—is the only possible source of economic growth that can be affected by policymakers. Moreover, under these assumptions the total tax burden not only should, but inevitably must, fall entirely upon the incomes of workers (who by assumption cannot avoid such taxes by having fewer or less-educated children, though property owners are assumed able to avoid taxes on property income by investing less in property). The Stork Assumption, not economic theory, underlies the perennial proposals to abolish taxes on property income, which are advocated by a cottage industry of (mostly my fellow Republican) economists centered in Washington, D.C.

As a corollary to the Economic Stork Theory, the only “useful” work done in the economy is work done for wages or other economic rewards, and hence there are only two kinds of human activity, work and leisure. Hence, there are only two kinds of Individuals in this theory: Partially Useful Individuals (PUIs) and Totally Useless Individuals (TUIs). The PUIs are partially useful because they spend a part of their time at “work” producing things in the money economy. The TUIs, however, don’t “work” at all because they earn no wage. Rather, some of the TUIs, otherwise known as “mothers,” spend their time in such leisure activities as taking care of the household pets; some of these pets are called “cats” or “dogs,” and others are called “children,” another form of TUIs.

Since the standard of living in the EST is the result of a positive capital-to-labor ratio, increasing the number of PUIs does not increase the standard of living unless the amount of capital is increased by at least an equal amount. In other words, you can increase the standard of living by decreasing the number of people, or at least slowing the growth of the population. Therefore the crucial element in growth is capital, and people are problematic. The policy implications are that capital should not be taxed, only people, in the form of labor or consumption taxes. This will help to discourage the formation of new PUI/TUIs, while raising the capital-to-labor ratio.

Mueller points out that the EST’s most glaring error is the failure to recognize that the family is the basic economic unit. And within the family, the choice is not so much between work and leisure as it is between production for exchange and production for use. Of course, economic theory simply has no way to account for production for use, even though it is actually the whole point of production for exchange; we work to provide money to buy meat and potatoes which we then use to produce dinner. Production for use does not show up in the GDP, but in fact the GDP presupposes such production; indeed, it is the whole point of the exchange economy.

What the TUIs known as “mothers” are doing is crucial not just to the continuation of the economic system, but to the continuation of civilization itself. There is no economic growth without mothers and the job they do. Moreover, the social shifts of the last 50 years have moved us away from production for use to more production for exchange. Now, one may debate as long as one likes the soundness of this move into the workplace in terms of, say, women’s liberation. But as the feminists point out (quite rightly), if mothers were paid a salary for everything they do, they would earn a hefty salary indeed. But the attempt to monetize the work of mothers, to convert it from production for use to production for exchange, is futile and leads to endless debates that have no possible resolution. There simply isn’t enough money on the planet to replace what mothers do everyday. The transfer of work from use to exchange does indeed show up as an “increase” in the GDP, but not as an increase in any actual output of goods and services, and likely involves an actual decrease in such services and in their quality. When mom cooks you a dinner, the GDP does not record the fact; but when she takes the family to MacDonald's, the GDP rises. But do fast-food stands really substitute for family meals? Do day care centers really provide the same level of “care” as does a family?

The Economic Stork Theory isn't even compatible with the commodification of labor. After all, economic theory recognizes that the price of any commodity must cover all of its costs, not only its production costs, but its maintenance and depreciation costs as well. But labor also has a “production cost” (the family, the school, etc.) maintenance costs (subsistence and health care) and depreciation costs (old age). If the price of labor does not cover these costs, then the economic system does not meet its own basic requirements. An economic system that doesn't understand the basic economics of the family will gradually erode the family, which is precisely what has been happening in the last 30 or 40 years.

Distributism and the Entrepreneur

My address to the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest:













My great thanks to Dr. Claudia Tuclea for the invitation, and to the students of the Academy for their attendance and attention to a wandering foreigner.

Distributism and Global Warming

Not a Single Cube of Ice

In November of 2008, the cargo ship Camilla Desgagnés delivered supplies to the Arctic village of Kugluctuk. It did so by traversing the Northwest Passage and was first commercial voyage through the passage in recorded history. Normally, the Northwest Passage can be traversed only by powerful ice-breakers, if at all, but on this voyage they did not see a single cube of ice. It is likely that the passage will soon be open to regular commercial shipping, and on a year-round basis. This is likely to cause some problems for Canada, since it claims sovereignty over the passage, a claim which no other nation (including the United States) recognizes. It could even be a causus belli, if Canada decides to defend its claims.

Canada's claims are not my subject; I am concerned with the meaning of this voyage. The voyage of the Camilla Degangés should be sufficient to prove the reality of global warming, which has cleared the passage of ice. At one time, perhaps, it was possible to deny global warming, or to claim that the evidence was not weighty enough to reach a conclusion, but the voyage of a ship of 5,000 metric tonnes should be weight enough to settle the question. But while it settles the question of whether there is global warming, it does not settle the questions of the causes or the cures.

The major question is whether global warming has its roots in human industrial production, and the tons of pollutants spewed into the natural environment. To be sure, there have been changes in the climate within human history prior to the Industrial Revolution. There was the Medieval Warming Period which allowed the expansion of Viking power, and the “Little Ice Age” which ended it. Nevertheless, it would also be a mistake in logic to conclude that because there are natural causes of climate change, there can be no human causes as well.

I must confess up front that I am not smart enough to reach any informed conclusion about the subject; the scientific debates exceed my poor knowledge by several orders of magnitude. But I would be very much surprised to learn that you could dump unnatural chemicals into the environment, or natural chemicals in unnatural amounts, and not have any effect. To expect nature to handle a chemical it has never seen, or to rebalance chemicals it has already balanced, is to expect too much of the natural order. Of this I am sure: The burden of proof must rest on the polluters. Those who wish to use the air, the rivers, the ocean, and the land as public dumps should be forced to demonstrate, on sound evidence, that it will do no harm. Those who would limit such dumping do not have to prove a thing, other than that such dumping is not natural; it is up to the dumpers to prove that nature can take it.

Suspicion about “Environmentalism”

I believe that conservatives express great skepticism about global warming for two reasons at least. One, it is frequently connected with theories of “overpopulation,” theories which by now should have been thoroughly debunked, and two, they view it as an attack on capitalism and a back-door route to global socialism. These are legitimate grounds for suspicion. Concerning the first, if population control is the solution, then China, with its one-child policy, should be well on the way to solving its pollution problem. But in fact, the reverse is the case. China's pollution problems are growing with its demographic problems, not shrinking. Indeed, the one-child policy has made China's problems all that much worse. No matter how bad things get in the United States, they will still be better than what happens in China.

It is not too many people, but too many wasteful people that are the problem. One can confirm this with a little thought experiment. Imagine that the population of Africa is doubled at an instant, but their levels of consumption are held constant. It is likely that there would be little, if any, environmental effect; Africa has more than enough resources to support a much larger population. But now, imagine that the population is held constant, but their consumption levels are raised immediately to that of the Americans or Europeans. This is likely to result in an environmental catastrophe. This thought experiment is being tested in fact as both China and India aspire to American forms of consumerism.

Pollution as a “Property Right”

The other problem is that conservatives see environmentalism as an attack on capitalism and industrialism. However, even if that were true at one time, the reverse is happening now, namely that capitalism itself is being proposed as the solution, through the means of establishing pollution as a property right. This is the meaning of the “cap and trade” system. Government will give the biggest polluters the biggest rights to pollute, and then slowly withdraw the rights, leading to a market in pollution rights. And since the market knows all things, sees all things, the market will solve the problem without any further government involvement.

It is hard for me to imagine a worse solution than making a pollution a “right,” essentially a legal right to poison your neighbor. When you create such rights, you are likely to get more of a thing, not less. And since there are such huge measurement problems, not to mention a host of loopholes, cap and trade will create a vast and profitable market without materially reducing pollution. Indeed, creating a property right in pollution creates a constituency to continue that right, and extend it. The “trade” part of cap and trade will be real enough; the “cap” part is likely to be ephemeral. (For a good left-wing analysis of this program, see Annie Leonard's The Story of Cap and Trade; while you are at her site, see The Story of Stuff.)

Distributist Solutions

The proper answer to bad solutions is not no solutions; it is better solutions. Nor is denial an answer. Even if we are in a “natural” warming period, unrestrained industrial action can only make it worse. Distributism is capable of providing these better solutions, and recognizing the reality of pollution, for distributism itself is an exercise in realism. And distributist solutions are rooted in two sound principles: proper cost accounting and community rights.

Pollution is an “externality.” An externality is the cost of a transaction that is borne by someone not a party to the transaction. When a company dumps mercury into the river, there will be health problems downstream, a real cost. The price of a product should reflect all the costs, but this cost will not show up in the price. The people downstream of the plant will subsidize the company through increased birth defects; the company will get the benefits of using the river as a sewer, and the downstream babies will get the cost of a lifetime of problems. By definition, an externality cannot be handled by the market; it is external to the market. To ask the market to handle the problem is asking it to do something it cannot do, and that is asking for trouble.

The first step in any solution is not to see pollution as a right, but as a wrong. And the nature of that wrong is that it appropriates a community resource (such as the air, the river, the ground) as a private property, and does so without any compensation to the community. The community has every natural right to forbid this, or at least to charge for the use of these resources, up to their full value.

Proper cost accounting insures that all costs show up in the price of a product. In the case of externalities, the market cannot do this; it is up to the community. The community must put a price on its resources, just like any other owner of a resource must do. Some resources cannot be assigned any cost. In the case of mercury poisoning, it can only be forbidden. Other things can be priced, even at a price that restricts their use. Carbon outputs can be priced, and ought to be; the community ought to recover something for the use of its resources, and the overuse of certain things ought to be discouraged. Only proper cost accounting and the proper recognition of community rights can do this. It is amazing, by the way, just how many questions of social justice come down to questions of proper cost accounting. Indeed, one of the great uses of distributism is to ensure that costs are properly charged to cost causers.

Distributists should be leaders, not laggards, in dealing with these questions. Aside from the economic issues, distributism is rooted in Christian principles which dictate a reverence for nature. This reverence is not a worship of nature in the raw, but a proper respect for the created order over which man has proper dominion. This dominion is not a tyranny which allows us to abuse nature, but rather to care for it. We make nature serve human ends; this is right and proper. But in doing so, we do not violate its “natural” status; we do not convert the river into an open sewer, the ground into a cesspit. At that point, it is not natural, and quickly ceases to serve any human purpose, other than the purpose of letting a few humans get rich at the expense of their brothers.

Into the Deep

My friend and Co-editor on the Romanian anthology, Dr. Ovidiu Hurdezeu, has put together a little film of our journey to Romania.



I have written of the village depicted in this film at Burn the Vineyard!

Fall of the Republic

There is an interesting video produced by Alex Jones called "Fall of the Republic", which in my view merits watching, and is available for free here.

Though I don't agree with everything in the video, and think certain things are overly sensationalist, the main points of the video are sound.

One of the amusing things is in the beginning is that one of the contributors attributes to America the concept of the separation of powers, limited government and the establishment of government in such a way that it serves a common good. This idea actually comes from St. Robert Bellarmine, whose political treatises never left Thomas Jefferson's desk.

Nevertheless, they trace the work of globalism and the current globalist banking industry in creating the crises that grips us presently. The contributors to this documentary compare it to oligarchy, and demonstrate how the international elite function by that and force various policies to erode the rights of the general population.

The video also exposes the establishment of a world governing body of scientists who enforce the state doctrine of population control, family planning, social engineering and climate change.

The significance of global warming doctrine is that by identifying carbon dioxide as the evil which is "destroying the planet", the world governing body will have the right to tax you and me for the right to breathe. This is essential to breaking down sovereignty and self government, which are so necessary to defending a society from control by an external force.

It also shows us many examples of how a police state is on the verge of being created, and (in my opinion) strongly makes the case for a hidden hand controlling Obama by demonstrating the numerous flip flops from his campaign promises of transparency and change and the reality of continuation of Bush policy, and has nothing at all to do with change.

The movie also has the benefit of not being partisan with respect to right and left, taking aim at both Obama and Bush and demonstrating continuity of Obama and Bush's administrations. In reality of course (as it seems to me), there is total continuity of government since 1988.

The film, bringing us several contributors in the form of economists, climate scientists, researchers and bloggers, really hits the nail on the head of the present crisis. It is also aided by numerous video clips of the elites themselves telling us from their own mouths that accountability, sovereignty and freedom do not matter.

Where the movie fails in my view, is in the concluding half hour they describe the work of the global financial elite as trying to destroy capitalism. What they fail to note is that it is the logical and necessary conclusion of capitalism. The instabilities of capitalism are only solvable, those who have can only make certain they continue to have if they turn modern economies into a slave state. The world the film attempts to show us was predicted by Hilaire Belloc nearly 100 years ago in his work "The Servile State", which he makes the case that capitalism must ultimately end in the restoration of slavery.

Another shortcoming (in my view) of the film is that they do not spend enough time explaining the mechanisms of banking. They spend some time talking about derivatives, and the breakdown of regulation with respect to them, but they do not spend enough time talking about banking either in its proper role or its abuse which is at the heart of today's problems.

The proper function of a bank is to put capital into the community. If x number of people have invested in a bank, and they find (as has always been the case) that people need only 10% of their money at a time, they make an investment on some kind of productive enterprise. This gains the bank a profit, and it was on a productive loan for something say such as mining or manufacturing. The fee they charge for the use of their money is just, it is a percentage of the profit earned with their productive loan. In that sense their money was capital, without which the productive venture could not have worked, and thus the bank has infused capital into the community.

Banking today by contrast takes capital out of the community, and then demands more from the government when they run out of money.

Another of the film's flaws is they act as if America is now the last country standing in the way of the global elite. There are many other countries with many members of their populace just as alarmed as we are, albeit they might be a little less organized and noted than resistance in this country.

Nevertheless, in spite of these and other shortcomings or its Amero-centric outlook, "Fall of the Republic" is an important movie with an important message, our allegiance ought not be to democrats and republicans, neither to 3rd parties, but to a unifying principle of society guaranteeing our freedom and sovereignty, which as Americans is the constitution and the bill of rights. Even as a monarchist I can take that over the new order that is coming.

The Reality of Localism

As distributists, we're all strongly committed to localism; that is, to making our society, particularly our production, less remote and more local. Indeed, distributism is a name for that economic system in which more, rather than less, of the population is the owner of productive property; such a system necessarily entails more local production. Many distributists, however, forget that this economic localism corresponds to a very real cultural localism, one which is part of the universal experience of mankind.

Culturally, we are all localists, even our so-called cosmopolitans. (Indeed, the problem with our modern cosmopolitans is that they are too local, not that they are not local enough.) The "it takes a village" mantra that the modern nation-state constantly uses as an excuse to preempt the just powers of parents is often grotesquely overextended, but nevertheless there is real and substantial truth in it. We are raised by our parents, but we inevitably have substantial contact with others around us, and others around us are inevitably those who come from the same locality as we do. They, in turn, were raised by parents, but also had substantial contact primarily with other locals. As a result, whole cultural systems rise up which are confined primarily to a given, localized area, distinguished from all others throughout the world.

Localities are distinguished from others in countless ways. Those in a given area sing songs that are unlike those sung in other places; they eat food that is not eaten elsewhere; they adopt curious hairstyles and clothing; they play games that others find odd. Men tend to share things with other men with whom they have more in common, rather than with those with whom they have less, and they have more in common with those who live near them than with those who live far away.

It's sometimes hard to recognize this in our age of distributed computing, but look at the question from a natural point of view. If a hurricane knocks my neighbor's tree down into my yard, who will help me clean up the flotsam? When my lawnmower breaks down, to whom do I turn to borrow one? When the city garbage collectors are careless with their task, with whom will I join my voice to obtain redress? When my house is on fire, who will call the firemen for me? When I lock my keys in my home, whose phone do I use to call for help? When the grocery store runs out of bread and milk before a snowstorm, who can I rely on to share?

Yet even in light of all this, many claim that localism is outdated, that we now live in a "global society." Now, after all, we have Twitter; many of us have more in common with individuals we've never even met than with our neighbors. But this overlooks the vast majority of our daily and necessary lives. While I'm sure many people find it wonderful that another person halfway around the world can know exactly what I'm having for lunch today, it hardly compares with the localism we're discussing here. These globalists, these cosmopolitans too good for the universal localism may have global news sites and global networking, and these things are all fine and good. But the things of the earth, the things that are closest to who we are and what we need to maintain our safety and even our existence, are and must be local. And these things, by necessity, we have in common with our neighbors, with those who live in real, physical proximity to us. We have more in common with these fine people than we do with anyone else in the world, no matter how closely we follow someone's Facebook feed.

My neighbors are really my best friends; I have more in common with them than I do with anyone. And there is absolutely nothing in the world that can change that. No matter how cosmopolitan our society becomes; even if we begin a national policy of moving to another state at least twice a year; for as long as we live in a place, we are dependent upon that place and the people who share it with us. For anyone who doubts it, let him wait for his Myspace fans to call the fire department when they see smoke coming out of his windows while he sleeps. For the rest of us, we will rely on what men throughout the world have always relied on---the people who live next door. We can try to ignore it, but we cannot change it. Man is an inherently local creature.

Yet modernity has long been on a mission not only to ignore it, but to positively oppose it, like Harold the Usurper commanding the waves to cease. Our modern economy, in particular, has been a great force attempting to undermine this unavoidable localism. There are great incentives for leaving localities, particularly smaller ones, to gravitate toward great centers where, we are told, people aren't so "provincial" and "small-minded." Economic production is increasingly centralized; even that most quintessentially local activity, agriculture, has been warped into an industry, producing corn and hogs as though they were parts in a great machine. Television, radio, and other modern media have rendered the culture of our locality less and less important, as people increasingly follow whatever culture they see emanating from New York and San Francisco. Consequently, we are told, localities are irrelevant; only the "global society" is important.

One might as well say that men are irrelevant, and only the commune matters; yet without the parts, the whole will inevitably collapse. And that's precisely what's happening. As our localities weaken, as everything from our culture to our economy centralizes and our people increasingly ignore their roots, our larger societies become increasingly untenable. With nothing to anchor it, the ship continually blows further adrift, and our deracinated citizens continually invent newer and more disgusting debaucheries for the public approval, which is never long in coming. A people which forgets its roots will die as surely as will the branches of a rootless tree; and our people's roots, like all peoples', are in localities.

For how can we contribute to or benefit from our new global society if we're not even really part of our local one? The leaf can gather all the sunlight it can, but if the roots aren't in the ground the tree will die. The West is like a man so busy pressing his suits and gelling his hair that he forgets he still needs to eat. We are physical beings, necessarily tied to a particular place at a particular time; when our culture and our economy no longer reflects this reality, we know that the corruption of our society has reached a critical stage.

For the distributist, dedicated to men living as men and not as disembodied brains (for what else is the man without a place?), the solution is obvious: become more local. There is no need for me to rehash the many economic means of doing so, but think of the cultural means. These are simple; the most basic is, the next time you see your neighbor out mowing his lawn or washing his car, do the most revolutionary and countercultural thing you can imagine: walk up to him and say hello. Really; it's that simple. Once upon a time, people used to have block parties; when the weather gets nice in the spring again, throw one. Invite not your friends from work, but your neighbors. Help organize a neighborhood watch to protect your community from becoming crime-ridden and keep your children safe.

You may even go the extra mile. Learn about your place's history and culture. Learn local songs, tell local stories. Go to local festivals and cultural events. Join local organizations, like museums or community centers. Get involved in local politics. Simply be local; really live in your place, rather than just store your earthly flesh there for a while. Plant your roots, or your branches will inevitably die.

Praise be to Christ the King!


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