Re: Kurlands false accusation; Kurland's Response

[OWNCO@aol.com]

My good old buddy Shann,

This is getting to be more fun than I've had in years.

You're keep avoiding the issue.  The main issue is whether you are prepared 
to defend your position in public.  If you are, I think everyone will benefit.

You say that I falsely accused you of not agreeing with binary economics, 
which Kelso, Ashford, Shakespeare, Bill Greider, Norman Bailey (former 
Special Assistant for International Economic Affairs for President Reagan), I 
and many others in CESJ's network around the world consider to be the "heart 
of the Kelso paradigm."  Yet you explicitly admitted in your "private message 
of September 26" that "I (Shann) have never mentioned binary economics to 
promote Kelso's techniques and I have never said anything against it because 
I have completely ignored it and used my own analysis partly inspired by 
Kelso. . ."  If you believed, as I do, in binary economics, why would you 
ignore it?  Any reasonable person would have to conclude that you did not 
mention binary economics, intended as a comprehensive and unified theory of 
economics, because you did not agree with it.  Why else would you only partly 
use Kelso's ideas in your own analysis.  

Shann, why don't you come right out and tell the world that you agree with 
the Kelso paradigm?  Or that you disagree with Kelso's and other thoughtful 
people's claim the Kelso paradigm as a whole is a major breakthrough in 
economics--bigger than Adam Smith or Karl Marx or John Maynard Keynes--but 
that you want to pick only those parts of the Kelso paradigm that fit your 
view of the world.  

You claim that you "have never mentioned binary economics to promote Kelso 
techniques."  But binary economists invented certain techniques to achieve 
what the underlying theory concluded was the most realistic means for making 
a market economy work and to overcome mass poverty and economic powerlessness 
in an age that is technologically capable of providing abundance and economic 
justice for everyone in the world.  Mortimer Adler, one of America's leading 
philosophers, said that Kelso's ideas "were the most revolutionary ideas of 
the century."  I agree with Adler's assessment.  And he was not referring to 
the ESOP and other "techniques" conceived by Kelso to achieve the goal of 
genuine economic democracy for the world through universal participation in 
ownership.  

What Shann fails to see is that really good ideas are good because they work. 
 And if techniques are based on bad ideas or confused ideas or illogical 
ideas, eventually they will not work.  The point is, Shann, you can't ignore 
the paradigm or "big idea" in trying to solve problems.  Many people have 
suffered from bad economic ideas, and that is why I think it critical for COG 
to try to come to a consensus on a "New Paradigms for the New Millennium."  
Let binary economists present their paradigm.  Let Shann, if he chooses to, 
present his paradigm.  And let anyone else who joins a paradigm discussion 
group present his or her paradigm.  Let reason and the power of persuasion be 
unleashed and let the best paradigm win.  

As I told Shann, I am a slave to no man, but I am a willing slave to the 
truth.  If someone has a greater truth than I have, I willingly abandon my 
position, and I have done so on some fundamental issues several times in my 
life.  My first encounter with Kelso's ideas in March 1965 was chronicled in 
Stuart Speider's 1976 book, "A Piece of the Action." Kelso filled a big void 
in my economic thinking, despite my rigorous studies in the initial Law and 
Economics courses offered at the University of Chicago.  When I joined Kelso 
I was on the other side of the political spectrum, working in the midst of 
the most important social action initiatives of the early 1960s.  If I didn't 
think Kelso's paradigm was right and useful for changing the world, I 
certainly would have said so when I broke my professional association with 
Kelso in 1976 after 11 years as his one-man think tank and lobbying arm in 
Washington, with some hands-on experience in orchestrating the world's first 
100% leveraged ESOP buyout to save 500 jobs at South Bend Lathe.  If I had no 
difficulty continuing to say that I agreed with Kelso, why can't you?

Shann it really bothers me that you seem to fear rejection by mainstream 
economists.  From 1965 on I took Kelso's ideas to some of the leading 
economic thinkers of the day, such as Leon Keyserling who was chairman of the 
Council of Economic Advisers under President Truman, Nat Goldfinger, the 
Chief Economist of the AFL-CIO, Milton Friedman, Franco Modigliani, Woodie 
Goldberg of the UAW, Robert Theobald, the author of the guaranteed annual 
income proposal, Michael Harrington, Wright Patman, etc.  What I went to them 
for was not approval, which I would have liked, but to see if any of them 
could punch holes in the Kelso paradigm.  And none of them could.  Keynes 
himself concluded his "General Theory" book by stating that practical men are 
often the "slaves of some defunct economist."  Once an open-minded person 
studies binary economics, he would see that almost all academic economists 
today are slaves of "some defunct economist", and that includes Keynes.  If 
economists--who are excellent at studying and gathering statistics from the 
past--could solve the problems of the world, why haven't they?
What Kelso understood and Shann does not is that the goal of widespread 
ownership and tools like the ESOP and democratizing access to capital credit 
through reforms in Federal Reserve discount policy is not enough, in the 
policies are shaped by the wrong paradigm.  So, Shann, let's get together on 
shaping the right paradigm.

You ask, what does binary economics have to offer mainstream economists?  The 
truth, Shann, the truth, at least a sounder paradigm to analyze and solve 
problems, including more sound and just policies than some that you have been 
pushing.  Click on <A 
HREF="http://www.cesj.org/binary_economics/binary_econ_review-nk.html";>Review 
of Binary Economics</A> to see what others think of the new 
Ashford-Shakespeare book on the subject.

You have charged that I have falsely accused you of not being a supporter of 
binary economics.  I hope that my response refutes your charge completely.  
If not let's not run away from the challenge and fun of a good debate.  

Now I want to counter-charge that you have falsely accused Kelso and me of 
wanting "to preserve the existing system."  I take great pride in being a 
"radical centrist" and have often said that the ultimate profession is to be 
a "revolutionary in ideas."  Bill Greider has quoted me in his book, "One 
World, Ready or Not" as wanting to "obliterate capitalism", not preserve it, 
and to replace it with a real "Third Way."  Your accusation is based on your 
resentment of the fact that Kelso and I totally reject your proposals to 
"change the rules of property."  On some points you're right, we complement 
one another.  But on this point, you are wrong and deserve to be challenged.  
(Perhaps a reading of the CESJ Code of Ethics will help you see that we are 
not attacking you personally, but we are doing you and COG a favor by 
bringing our opposition into the open marketplace of reason; please click on  
<A HREF="http://www.cesj.org/history/codeofethics.htm";>CESJ's Code of 
Ethics</A> ) 

You feel that there is no way short of changing the rules of property to 
democratize future ownership and economic power.  You're right if you think 
that revolutionary ideas can only be achieved by revolutionary means, and 
that is how I would characterize your proposal. Your idea is an invitation to 
class warfare.  Yes, Kelso's revolutionary idea will not be achieved 
overnight.  But it can be done with minimal or no coercion, and therefore is 
less likely to lead to violence and bloodshed.  

Change, Shann, is necessarily evolutionary, if only because of the natural 
inertia of human beings and social institutions.  But without coercion or 
violent revolution, Kelso paradigm and our Capital Homestead Act (click on <A 
HREF="http://www.cesj.org/homestead/cha-summary.htm";>Capital Homestead Act 
Summary of Reforms</A> ) can radically equalize future ownership 
opportunities, so that within one or two generations wealth and economic 
power will become more equitably distributed.  If the binary growth model is 
applied globally and systematically through the diffusion of advanced 
technologies, binary finance institutions and global corporations transformed 
according to Value-Based Management (see  <A 
HREF="http://www.cesj.org/vbm/vbmsummary.htm";>Value Based Management</A> ), 
binary economics could within the next 50 years totally eradicate poverty in 
the world.  That is the synthesis of the vision of Bucky Fuller and that of 
Louis Kelso.

Where yo go astray, Shann, is in failing to understand the Kelso-Adler theory 
of economic justice (click on  <A 
HREF="http://www.cesj.org/history/economicjustice-defined.html";>Defining 
Economic and Social Justice</A> ).  You try to address the monopoly and greed 
problem by eroding the institution of private property, which is incorporated 
(along with the free and open market for determining economic values) in 
Kelso's principle of distribution, the out-take side of the economic 
equation.  Kelso addresses the problem of monopoly and greed from the input 
side of the economic equation (his principle of participation) and a feedback 
mechanism activated by his anti-monopoly principle (what CESJ calls the 
principle of harmony which is activated by acts of social justice to restore 
balance and equity when either of the other two principles are violated.)  
Under the Kelso theory of justice and binary economics, there is no need to 
change the rules of property.  The only need is to lift the legal and 
institutional barriers to more equal opportunity for the propertyless to 
become owners, and the distribution side, if the market is allowed to operate 
fairly, will take care of itself.  The participation principle also demands 
that we change our inheritance laws to avoid monopolistic accumulations of 
wealth to remain concentrated from one generation to the next.  Thus, 
focussing on barriers to participation is the key to solving the problem 
stemming from monopoly.  Spreading ownership and economic power is the only 
rational approach to minimizing the abuses of concentrated power.  If Shann 
thinks that the propertyless people want to change the rules of property, he 
should come with me on my next trip to East St. Louis.  What the people want 
is access to the club, a level playing field, and the Kelso paradigm is the 
best one I've come across to provide that access.

So, Shann, don't think we have anything against you when we criticize your 
ideas.  We separate the message from the messenger.  And I think your heart 
is in the right place.

All the best, Norm