Wealth Matters

 Now no plant [natural resources] had yet sprung up on the earth ... and there was no one to work the ground [human labor] ... So God created mankind in his own image ... and said "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth ... and to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky I give every green plant for food." ― Genesis

Our technology, our machines [tools], is part of our humanity. We created them to extend ourselves, and that is what is unique about human beings. ― Ray Kurzweil





Every nation [except America] has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. [But in America everyone mocks the poor by] asking this cruel question: "if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?" ― Kurt Vonnegut


With the "fall of communism" as part of the Revolutions of 1989, the planet's preeminent remaining system for producing and allocating wealth became capitalism ... which appeared to be the no-brainer, default answer to the world's problems. But as promising as it seemed to be, the last four decades have shown us that, even in the absence of viable alternatives, capitalism has not been able to avoid serious and threatening problems such as

• the failure of popular movements to remove oligarchs and dictators,
• endless military and now trade wars,
• a degraded and potentially deteriorating global environment,
• mass migration to avoid hardship provoking nationalism to protect lifestyles and
• exploding economic inequality that is unstable if not unsustainable.

To help us better understand the issues at stake, we will consider the following three questions:

1. How does material wealth arise from combining natural resources, human labor and tools [including all forms of technology]  ... and how do capitalism and socialism justify the different ways they produce and allocate wealth among the members of society? Does this equation help or hinder your understanding of the issues and relationships:

Man's Material Wealth = Natural Resources + (Human Labor x Tools)

2. Is capitalism working as anticipated in America and globally? If not, why not? And how accurate is the claim that Republicans want capitalism while Democrats want socialism?

3. Can capitalism and socialism be "mixed" and if so how should this be done to preserve the benefits while avoiding the pitfalls of each system? Does this thought help or hinder your understanding of the proper dividing line between capitalism and socialism:

"There are, finally, undoubted fields where no legal arrangements can create the main condition on which the usefulness of the system of competition and private property depends: namely, that the owner benefits from all the useful services rendered by his property and suffers for all the damages caused to others by its use. ... In all these instances there is a divergence between the items which enter into private calculation and those which affect social welfare; and, wherever this divergence becomes important, some method other than competition may have to be found to supply the services in question. ... But the fact that we have to resort to the substitution of direct regulation by authority where the conditions for the proper working of competition cannot be created does not prove that we should suppress competition where it can be made to function." FA Hayek, 1944, "The Road to Serfdom", Chapter 3: Individualism and Collectivism

 When, Where and a Flyer

Tuesday, Nov 13,  7:00 to 8:45 pm at Friends University in the President's Dining Room on the 1st floor of Casado Campus Center.  Click FLYER above and [if we have it] you will get a flyer which you can print and post appropriately to alert others about the upcoming meeting.

... and if you are inclined and able to say THANKS to Friends for the serious hospitality extended to NSS during 2018, please consider making a tax deductible gift payable to "Friends University" noting "New Symposium Society" on the memo line of your check.  You can give the check to us and we will get it to them ... or just mail it yourself.

The Evening's Format: Breakout Groups

We will be testing a new breakout group format for the evening. You can read more about it on the Breakout Groups page of this blog.

• Symposiasts will be divided into groups of 10-15 each with its own moderator.
• The members of each group will spend 20-30 minutes discussing each question.
• At the end, we will all regather to adjourn for the evening ... and the year.

Send us an email in advance at NewSymposium@gmail.com if you plan on coming so we can be sure to have enough breakout group spaces and moderators. We look forward to a stimulating evening of total participation.

Epilogue

WOW is the only way to describe our evening discussing why Wealth Matters. With 20+ persons around a table ... in a very comfortable and productive setting in the Friends President's Dining Room ... which included Friends students as well as professors Russell Fox and Malcolm Harris ... and with Mike as our moderator ... WE became co-panelists for the evening as we worked together to articulate and examine various aspects of our topic which arose from our personal experiences and thoughts. We surprised ourselves at how productive and rewarding honest and respectful dialogue can be.

And while there was no AV recording of our dialogue due to the dispersed nature of the conversations, we did end the evening with a brief tally of what those in attendance would like to see most in our society and its leaders if they had to choose only one thing. The hands-down majority answer was expressed in two ways [positively and negatively]:

• more freedom
• less regulation.

Accordingly, we will begin work on a 2019 symposium on "Regulations Matter" at which we can discuss individual freedom and collective regulation as two distinct ways to "organize" ourselves sociologically and see if we can better discern the strengths and weaknesses of each and the proper, dynamic dividing line that can help us determine "how much" of each we need.

We welcomed old and new friends alike. We would especially like to thank the Friends University students who joined us ... they have so much to contribute! And we hope YOU will stay in touch with New Symposium Society in 2019. If you have some ideas to share about ways to improve or expand our work ... just let us hear from you with a COMMENT below ... or an email to NewSymposium@gmail.com.  Goodbye until our next meeting and stay tuned to our blogsite for further info about 2019.

NSS  Readings [with links]

Required
Buddhist Economics, EF Schumacher, 1966, Schumacher Center for a New Economics

Universal Basic Income Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Scam: The plan is no gift to the masses, but a tool for our further enslavement, Douglas Rushkoff, Medium, 2018

Suggested
A Review of Buddhist Economics and Universal Basic Income, Bob Love, Nov 2018 

Adam Smith on the Crisis of Capitalism, Machinery of Politics, 2012 [the desire for and danger of monopoly]

Founding Finance: Against the consensus account of America's formative years, review of Hogeland's book [see below] by David Skeel, Christianity Today, 2012

Founding Finance: How Debt, Speculation, Foreclosures, Protests, and Crackdowns Made Us a Nation, William Hogeland, 2012

Key Terms
Fascism [wikipedia]
Mixed Economy [wikipedia]