Today would have been the 80th birthday of my father Richard Dunn McElhinney. If readers could offer some prayers for the eternal repose of his soul, I would appreciate it. For those who do not believe in this ancient custom, then prayers for my mother (who still has difficulties on anniversaries such as this) and the rest of the family would be appreciated.

Eternal rest grant unto his soul oh Lord and may thy perpetual light shine upon him...May his soul and all the souls of the faithfully departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Apmen.

Points to Ponder:
(On Cigars)

Top Arizona News Anchor Declares 'Journalism Is Dead,' Publicly Resigns: 'I No Longer Want to Do This Job'

I have written on the problems in the media a number of times over the years with this posting being among the most recent. After how the media conducted themselves in the last election, we basically do not have real journalism anymore. The sooner folks accept this reality, the easier it will be for them.

On Usury, the Importance of Definitions to Reasoned Thought and Discourse, Etc.

This material is from a note published to Facebook on May 2, 2012. 

The standard of living of the average person today is significantly higher than it was in the middle ages

There may be more quantity, but that doesn't necessarily level out in the matter of quality of life. 

As a society worldwide taken as a whole, we live longer, are able to cure a lot more diseases, have better overall nutrition, and as I said previously, kings and queens in ages past did not live with the sort of luxury that the average person of today does. Nor did the average person of yesteryear have the sort of access to information and the possibilities/capabilities of improving their station in life the way we can today. By any number of objective measures{1}, how does one credibly say that the overall quality of life has not improved?

We are a more demanding society, much more spoiled, really. 

Societies are always demanding even if the nature of that demand can have a variegaton of sorts. As far as being much more spoiled, I agree in some respects this is true. However, I do not see folks like you who bewail these things trying to deprive yourself of some of that which makes you part of the spoiled element of society. In other words, I see plenty of moralizing and complaining but little in the way of actual workable solutions.

The thing is, we have all these things, but why aren't we happier?

Because material goods themselves do not suffice to make folks happy. They never have and they never will.

Upward mobility may be easier in some places, but other places, it is much more despotic, and not just because of rogue government, but also thanks to big corporations that make great profits in their capitol gains while marginalizing or impoverishing the places they outsource to.

Are you claiming that in the middle ages this sort of thing never happened -albeit in some different circumstances? And I see you wielding the big corporations shibboleth now. My guess is you do not whine about big corporations when you avail yourself of those products and services which they make available and which makes your life either more comfortable or otherwise easier in some fashion. So in order to have some credibility on this, how about you rid your life of everything you have that was in any way the product of big corporations and then you will be in a more credible position to whine about them? My guess is you not only would not do that but you probably would not even entertain the idea -or if you did you would come up with a thousand excuses for why you could not do that. But that is neither here nor there.

Poverty is a problem still because serfdom is now created by the new imperial land barons of world banks and corporate greed.

No, poverty is a problem still because poverty will always be a problem. When Jesus chastised the guy who nit picked over the cost of the oil that the repentant woman anointed him with in John's Gospel, he said "the poor you will always have with you." That does not mean that we are unable to better things in general for the poor of course but your generalizations are typical of someone who cares more for some sort of ideology than they do for actual facts and reality.

The larger an economy the more capital is required for growth.

If the system is based on debt and capitalist greed,then yes, more is always needed. And thus comes inflation and stretching the dollar until it has no value, until its greatest value is the debt put upon it.

You seem to be claiming that inflation is caused by capitalism. If this is your claim, then explain the significant problems of inflation in antiquity prior to the existence of capitalism. It was not uncommon in past eras for kings and other rulers to debase their currency on a regular basis. When you couple that with the inabilities to prevent a lot of the calamities we now can prevent or lessen, inflation was a far more serious problem in antiquity than it has been in recent centuries as a rule. For example, if you have droughts or other catastrophic events{2} that wipe out parts of or entire classifications of different foods, the cost of said foods suddenly spikes up dramatically. Pair those sorts of calamities that with your sovereign doing one of the regular currency debasements that were hardly infrequent and antiquity was hardly a Shangrala for the average person comrade (to put it mildly!).

And who wins there? The people that hold the debt. They hold the power, and are the means by which usury enslaves the world.

You continue to use a term that you do not even concern yourself with the meaning of.{3} I realize that such a practice is intended by you to mask your own lacunas of knowledge in this area{4} but as one of my earliest intellectual mentors was fond of saying "definitions are the tools of thought" and without certain points of reference, it is difficult to discuss any issue. And with usury, if you do not know what it actually is, then all of your railings against it are simply in Shakespeare's words "so much sound and fury signifying nothing."

There is no reference to the actual definition of usury which was defined by the Church in that article. And as the concept of usury was defined in and under different economic situations and assumptions, recourse to them is necessary to avoid misrepresenting the Church's actual view on these matters.

I don't know, it seems pretty simple

A lot of things [seem] pretty simple which are not.

the trick to put all people under the debt of the lenders has been the game of usury for a very long time, even before usury was defined by the Church.

And in the words of Governor Ronald Reagan "there you go again!" You are now engaging in bait and switch and then having recourse to a word you did not concern yourself with the actual meaning of at the outset.

Yes, why did you post a link to an article that does not even include within it the actual definition of usury which the church made?

How about because it's an encyclopedia and goes into the issue much more in depth than just posting a definition.

How can the article go more in depth on something that you do not bother defining to begin with? It would be like a paper on a subject which contains no thesis or any point in which the paper purports to defend or explain. Try if you are in school still writing a paper on a subject where you do not even explain at the outset what you are writing and then see what kind of grade the teacher gives you. If they have any business teaching at all, they will give you a failing grade for such an endeavour. You might as well be talking about widgets and your entire correspondence would make roughly the same amount of sense.

It notes the 'actual definition' is much more complex that you seem to imply here.

But it does not reference the actual definition of the concept in question now does it? This is no minor matter, the very foundation of rational thought and analysis hinges on knowing with as much precision as possible what one is dealing with. And this principle applies in all fields of knowledge.

But this seems to be the gist of the 'definition' as it stands:

Lending money at interest gives us the opportunity to exploit the passions or necessities of other men by compelling them to submit to ruinous conditions ; men are robbed and left destitute under the pretext of charity. Such is the usury against which the Fathers of the Church have always protested, and which is universally condemned at the present day. Dr. Funk defined it as the abuse of a certain superiority at the expense of another man's necessity ; but in this description he points to the opportunity and the means which enable a man to commit the sin of usury, rather than the formal malice of the sin itself. It is in itself unjust extortion, or robbery.

No, that paragraph goes into a lot of fluff and misdirection and obscures the matter rather than properly clarifying it. For example, lending money at interest is not ipso facto usury nor is lending money at interest by that very fact synonymous with ruinous conditions. Yet your proposed article in a few places gives precisely those impressions. Such deceptions do not clarify matters or go more in depth but if anything, they complicate the matter at hand and make for having an intelligent conversation on the issue of usury that much harder.

It was in anticipation of where this thread was likely to go in the absence of them that is why I raised the issue of the importance of definitions to begin with -well that and I tire of seeing folks talk about things of which they do not know much about of course. And as I suspected you might, your recourse to having your negligence in this area pointed out to you was to repost the same imprecise source which was criticized earlier. This makes it appear as if you are retreating from that which is clearer into that which is more obscure: a significant problem that subsists with those who do not concern themselves with an operative notion of what they are dealing with to begin with. A definition to grab two quick explanations off of Google{5} for demonstration is as follows:

A statement of the exact meaning of a word, esp. in a dictionary. An exact statement or description of the nature, scope, or meaning of something.

Now then, you either concern yourself with the meaning of words you bandy about or you do not. And if you do not, then you cannot expect those of us who take reason and logic seriously to take your complaints seriously.

I know well what usury is and is not and of the two of us, only one of us has actually considered the Church's own definition of the subject of what we are discussing.

I know well that you are nothing more than a snobbish brat. :p

Yeah, it is snobbish to expect those who are going to rail on issues to actually know what the hell they are talking about. Boy, if that is the sort of approach to thought and reasoned discourse that is par for the course these days, we are in an even worse dark age of sophistic unreason than I thought! But I digress.

Notes:

{1} With a bit more time, this list of examples could be notably lengthened but I trust what is here suffices in passing to support the point being made.

{2} I am not going to take time to compose a list of all the possibilities here but suffice to say, anyone familiar with even rudimentary understandings of history can come up with at least a few of them without a lot of effort.

{3} Usury for the purposes of this discussion is the one defined by the Fifth Lateran Council and what I referenced in previous responses to the person in question; namely as "when, from its use, a thing which produces nothing is applied to the acquiring of gain and profit without any work, any expense or any risk" (Lateran V, Session X circa 1515).

{4} And by all surface appearances to feed whatever ideology you are clinging to at the expense of any concerns for factual accuracy.

{5} So you can access them yourself for verification by simply entering "definition" in quotes twice separated by a comma.

On the Economics Ignorance of Many Purveyors of Distributive Economic Models:

This was a comment response I made to a Facebook post on July 18, 2012 which I intended to make a note out of at the time but never got around to. It is also representative of the sort of economics ignorance a number of folks I have seen over the years who tend to push certain dubious economic models. My interlocutors words will be in dark green font. Without further ado...

The capitalists want it as well.

I read your thread and it sounds like a giant whinefest with all due respect.

A dozen or two people living in one house find hand-me-downs virtuous,

The idea that it is seen as virtuous is silly -I do not know any of my relatives from large families who thought this way. It is more that in those situations they find hand me downs as a necessity.

they only need one set of cook pots,

Depends on the size of the family.

they only have one toaster.

And you know this how? Oh yes, because toasters were still a new technology back then and new technologies are always more expensive. Nowadays with toasters being so cheap compared to what they once were, what would have been economically unviable back when the technology was new is now achievable.

Large households are not good for the economy because they consume fewer goods.

Large households consume more things overall than smaller ones do.

If there were some way to split those people up so they inhabit three, four, five or six households, then we can sell five or six toasters, five or six sets of cook pots, five or six sets of dishes or cars or houses. From a capitalist’s point of view, it would be best if every one of our 300 million Americans lived in a separate house since that would maximize both purchases and profit.

And from a distributist point of view, it is better to shove them all onto a farm from a certain plot of land stolen from someone else{1} and make them grow their own food and make their own stuff and if they do not like it, tough. This is what their superiors demand so out of "obedience" they better damn well accept it and if not, the government will make them do it. And they had better not get any ideas of improving upon whatever meagre allotment they are allowed to reach or anything over that will be stolen from them by the government or some entity set up to spread the wealth around and ensure that everyone is within a defined level of "acceptable" economic status. Can I get a "whoaaaaa distributism" now folks?

Of course there would be no economic betterment in the above model because there is no incentive to risk capital one has or can attain to actually create anything that could better society. That would after all be "selfish" or somehow to be discouraged because if folks are not kept at near poverty and given no opportunities to better themselves, then they might be something less than showing proper servile obedience to appointed "elders" who know better just because.{2}

In order to break up the multi-generational family, sowing social dissension between the members of the family is absolutely critical.

Translation: no matter what your superiors say, you are to blindly and uncritically accept it. The state is to be treated with the same reverence as the church and do not dare question anything. Blind obedience is the rule of the day, can I get another "whoaaaaa distributism" now folks?

The most efficient way to set the various family members in opposition to one another is to encourage every kind of selfish behaviour. If each person thinks only of his own best interests, then each person will spend his income on himself, saving none of it for anyone else.

Here is the problem with all of this: you err in assuming that any economic model is intrinsically ethical or moral in and of itself. Like anything economics is value neutral by itself, it is what folks bring to the model that determines how it is implemented.

Unfortunately, this selfishness bleeds over into the workplace. A selfish worker is more likely to steal, to use up sick days and similar benefits at the highest possible rates, in short, s/he will have little loyalty to the company.

Aaah yes, maximum servile loyalty to the company. And do not even think of trying to acquire capital to build a company of your own and actually being your own boss instead of a worker bee...that would be selfish and place you above a preset "acceptable economic status" whereby you might actually question the rules set in place by your elders who by virtue of their age or presumed religious piety know more than you do about everything. Can I get a third "whoaaaaa distributism" now folks?

Part of the cost of doing business is precisely the controlled anarchy that tends to be engendered in the larger society as each person looks out primarily for number one.

Spoken by someone whose understanding of business is about as malformed as their understanding of what constitutes capitalism.

I have to stop this now because all this eye rolling is starting to give me a headache.

Notes:

{1} After redefining the concept of property to attempt to justify said theft and make it virtuous.

{2} Do not question it!