Category: Commentary

It’s quite frustrating that in 2025, well-intentioned people can still believe in socialism.  It’s as if they can’t learn from history or reason properly from who we are as human persons capable of ideals, but also enamored of self-promoting conceits and power trips.

Last Thursday, the Star Tribune published a commentary of mine on moral capitalism as the much better alternative to Omar Fateh’s democratic socialism.

My essay is here.

For those who hit a paywall, here it is:

How about Moral Capitalism, Instead of Democratic Socialism, for Minneapolis?

The much better alternative to Omar Fateh’s straight-jacketed capitalism is a moral capitalism – one born and raised in Minnesota.

Fateh can’t get rid of capitalism.  If he were to do that, who would then create the wealth needed to pay for everybody’s wants?

No, wealth creation is fundamental to human well-being and happiness.

To experience a moral capitalism is a piece of cake.  All you have to do is find a moral code that works for people and guides their economic behaviors.

Actually, there is one on the shelf.  It is Adam Smith’s first book, Theory of Moral Sentiments.  In that book, Smith observed that people have the capacity to put themselves in the shoes of others through empathy or what he called “sympathy.”  Today, we would call that conscience.  It is like having an observer inside you somewhere between your amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, an impartial evaluator of your actions from the perspective of a good greater than your unenlightened self-interest.

Once you put your conscience directed self-interest to work in capitalism, you discover how dependent you are on stakeholders – no customers, you are bankrupt; incompetent or malingering employees and you are also bankrupt; no investors, no lenders, you are bankrupt as well; putrid raw materials or worthless supplies – same result.  And live in a dysfunctional, violent, corrupt, society with filthy streets, you will have few customers, few investors, unproductive employees and no law and order – a proven formula for poverty and failure.  Your community is another stakeholder to nourish with due care.

Thus, a moral capitalism puts care of stakeholders first.

If you combine into one system Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations, you will have brought forth a moral capitalism

We might think of markets and money as the tangible parts of a moral capitalism and the caring management of stakeholders as the intangible part.

To manage both as one system, you just need to add intangibles to accounting.

First, put employees on the balance sheet as an asset.  Good employees are noted with a high number; unproductive employees with a low number.  The higher your asset number is, the more you are providing a moral capital.

For sales, add an intangible asset of reputation.

For access to investors, calculate the net present value of expected future income, discounted by risk of failure to care for stakeholders.  High risk of failure means low present value; low risk of future failure justifies a high present value.  Having a high present value will attract the enlightened self-interest of equity investors and lenders.

You can measure the quality of your employees with an assessment questionnaire.  You can measure the probability of customer purchases with such an assessment.  And the same for all other stakeholders.

If you do this, what will Omar Fateh and other “holier-than-thou” Democratic socialists have to complain about?

If he replies with griping about lack of access to wealth and cavils that there is no ethic of care to provide subsidies and entitlements to those who want them, you can ask: “What have those who want their wants attended to ever done to turn themselves into a social asset housing beneficial human capital, with skills to be a worthy contributor to our common destiny and so not be just a free rider?”

The Qur’an instructs us that each human person was born to be a khalifa – a faithful steward of God in his creation.  As persons, then, we have duties to others and to ourselves to work and contribute.  Jewish tradition speaks of this as tikkun olam – repairing the world.  In Catholic social teachings, we are “co-creators” with God of this world and our lives in it.  For Protestants, we seek vocations so that we might serve dutifully as ministers of the Almighty.  For Buddhists, we should seek the Noble Eightfold Way of right living, which is finding a middle way between self and other.

All these wisdom traditions point to a moral capitalism as our best calling.

I saw recently in the Wall Street Journal that a lot of cash is being invested in start-up companies, which will use the money to buy bitcoin and other crypto currencies.

This is a market bet on rising prices – i.e. future demand from as yet unknown consumers for crypto as an asset they want to own.

Here is the chart:

I found with a Google inquiry that:

• There are 17,134 total cryptocurrencies.
• The total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is $1.32 trillion.
• The trading volume of all cryptocurrencies, per 24 hours, is currently $172 billion.
• Bitcoin has the highest current market cap at approximately $650 billion – around 3x its closest rival, Ethereum.

The crypto market cap has been rising impressively:

But there was once a market mania for tulip bulbs in Holland:

And then there was the South Sea Bubble in the London Stock market in which Sir Isaac Newton lost his fortune:

And there was once an enthusiastic buying of stocks on Wall Street:

And within living memory, sub-prime mortgages soaked up a lot of money to be sold to willing buyers:

So, perhaps the best lesson to learn from history is to have caution about the quality of judgment which buyers have when money markets look most appetizing.

When something looks too good to be true, most likely it will not be worth the money in the long run.  But is that capitalism systemically creating wealth or just imperfect human nature at work when dazzled by the prospect of making easy money?

Shakespeare’s Henry V spoke thus to rally his English to charge (from his perspective) the rascally French in Harfleur.  He drew a line between fatalistic acceptance and taking action:

In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger; …
The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

I ran across yet another commentary, “ChatGPT’s Mental Health Costs Are Adding Up”, that we need to draw some line with AI in order to protect our heritage and our intelligence.

I have recently used ChatGPT and it went inventive on me: writing up its own conclusion to a chapter I had written on moral capitalism.  A reasonable conclusion, to be sure, but not mine.

I recently sent you two comments on the malign effects of TikTok and other “attention bewitching” short videos – free to viewers, but revenue-generating to companies.

Here is a proposal from Mary Ellen Klas, policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion, on how to stop the spread of these de-socializing electronic depressants: “Want Students to Thrive? Lock Up Their Phones”:

There are few things most American politicians seem to agree upon, but banning mobile phones in classrooms seems to be one of them.  Based on the experiences of some schools that have required students to prioritize learning over TikTok scrolling, there’s also a welcome side benefit: less conflict and more “hellos.”

When school starts this fall, students in most U.S. states and D.C. will be required by law to turn over or turn off their smartphones during all or most of the school day, according to an Education Week tally.

Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Utah have statewide bans.  Another 24 states have adopted rules or laws that require restrictions on mobile phones, but leave it up to school districts to decide whether to ban them or not.  Two states offer districts incentives to restrict phones. Another seven recommend local districts enact their own restrictions.

The methods and policy details vary widely between states, but the reasons for silencing phones are pretty universal.  A growing body of research has found that the more time children and their developing brains spend on smartphones, the greater the risk of negative mental health outcomes — from depression, to cyberbullying, to an inability to focus and learn.

Social media is intentionally designed “to expose users to an endless stream of content” which makes it addictive, said Carol Vidal, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.  That’s especially risky for children and teens, she said, “because their brains are still developing and they have less control over their impulses.” …

The idea of severing the phone from the classroom not only has legislators and governors in red and blue states giving it near-unanimous support, a 2024 survey by Pew Research found that 68% of U.S. adults support a ban on smartphone use among middle and high school students during class.

But a ban, in theory, is not the same as putting it into practice, especially for the large numbers of parents worried about being unable to contact their kids during the school day.

That’s something Principal Inge Esping noticed when she barred phones from classrooms at McPherson Middle School in Kansas, an hour north of Wichita.  In 2022, when Esping started as the school’s principal, she noticed that the spike in online bullying among students was happening during the school day.

“Middle schoolers are a little notorious for when they’re trying to make fun of someone,” she told me.  “They’ll take a picture of the person that they’re making fun of and share that via social media — especially during lunchtime.’’

Absences and suspensions were rising, with too many students staying home either because they feared confronting their bullies or because they were bullying others.  She and her staff decided to impose a rule in the 2022–23 school year requiring students to turn off their phones and store them in their lockers from the first bell to the last.

With few exceptions, children who had grown up with mobile phones “simply accepted it,” Esping said.  It was their parents who protested.

“I don’t think we really realized how much parents were reaching out to their students during the school day,” Esping recalled.  Many parents feared being unable to communicate with their children during school hours, particularly in an era of school shootings.  Others didn’t trust the school to notify them when their child needed them, she said.

She and her colleagues then embarked on an ambitious plan to persuade parents of the value of keeping phones out of reach during school hours.  She organized back-to-school events to increase communication, engaged more parents in volunteer and visiting opportunities and refined the school’s alert system that notifies families when there’s an emergency.

As parents grew to accept the new system, the results for their children were dramatic.  In the first year, the school saw a 5% increase in their state assessment scores in both reading and math. School suspensions dropped 70% by Christmas and have remained at half the rate they were before the ban.  And absenteeism went down from 39% to 11% — because taking phones away prevented many of the harmful social media comments that kept bullied kids from coming to school.

Other school districts with mobile phone restrictions reported similar results in student discipline.  A year after the Orange County School District in Florida implemented its phone ban in 2023, fighting went down 31% and “serious misconduct” issues decreased by 21%, Superintendent Maria Vazquez told Florida lawmakers in January. …

But for teachers, the most tangible difference has been the “huge vibe change,” said Esping, who was named Kansas Middle School Principal of the Year in April.  Teachers reported that students were now more engaged — in the classroom and school corridors.

“The year before the phone ban, you’d say ‘hello’ to a student and they would ignore you and move on because they’re so tied to their cell phone,” Esping told me.  But after the ban, “kids were looking up and talking to one another,” especially in the lunchroom and as students transitioned between classes.  “When you’d say, ‘good morning’ to them, they’d say ‘good morning’ back.”

As always, students may be teaching the rest of the nation something here.  Maybe more smartphone bans are exactly what we need.

I recently sent you a comment on TikTok videos.  After composing that depressing email, I read an article from Vox which accelerated my pessimism.  Its title is “Little Videos Are Cooking Our Brains.”

You can read it here.

A colleague sent me links to videos on TikTok which were posted by the most popular female and male influencers in the U.S.

I watched a few – some are only seconds long, just right for attention-deficit-disorder consumers – and quickly thought of these lines from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings. …

Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great?  Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!

Idiocy has risen up on the back of new technologies to transform minds from activating intelligence into passively wallowing in psychic mush.

Do we have a future worth living?

I urge you to take a few minutes, open the two links, and consume what kind of culture, morals, courage, dignity, etc., young Americans are absorbing:

The top female TikTok influencer.

The top male TikTok influencer.

We recently posted a couple more short videos on relevant and timely topics.  They include:

–A Reflection on AI

–The Relationship Between Money and Capitalism

All our videos can be found on our YouTube page here.  We recently put them into 9 playlists, which you can find here.

If you aren’t following us on Twitter or haven’t liked us on Facebook, please do so.  We update both platforms frequently.

Today is the 4^th of July in the Gregorian Calendar.  On this day in 1776, delegates from the different British colonies in North America signed in Philadelphia a declaration designed to provide legitimacy for their decision to terminate their allegiance to the king of England and his parliament.  Their argument for such termination was not legal, but philosophical.  Their premise was moral – a judgment on the rights of individuals derived from natural and divine dispositions.

I have a family connection to the acts of the American colonists in 1776.

Gathered in a congress, the delegates of the several British North American colonies In March 1776 resolved:

That it be recommended to the several Assemblies, Conventions, and Councils, or Committees of Safety of the United Colonies, immediately to cause all persons to be disarmed, within their respective Colonies, who are notoriously disaffected to the cause of America, or who have not associated, and refuse to associate, to defend by Arms, the United Colonies, against the hostile attempts of the British Fleets and Armies.

In April 1776, Winthrop Young, my direct ancestor on my father’s side, subscribed to this oath:

“We the Subscribers, do hereby solemnly engage, and promise, that we will, to the utmost of our Power, at the Risque of our Lives and Fortunes, with Arms, oppose the hostile Proceedings of the British Fleets, and Armies, against the United American Colonies.”

Then, on July 4, 1776, Lewis Morris, a collateral ancestor on my mother’s side, signed the Declaration of Independence.  His signature:

The moral legitimation used by those delegates also informs the Caux Round Table’s Principles for Government.  The moral principle is that public power is held in trust as a responsibility to serve with honor, fidelity and due care.

The pivotal assertion of the declaration is:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.  To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

In short, the king has abused his office, his trusteeship.  As a result, he has lost his authority, his right to rule and manage those who are entitled to benefit from his use of power and prosper under his governance.

The American Declaration of Independence framed that argument as follows:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

The Caux Round Table Principles for Government frame the principal duty of government as:

Public power is held in trust for the community.

Power brings responsibility.  Power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds the actions of one to the welfare of others.

Therefore, the power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the community and its citizens.  Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold.  They have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.

Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office.  They are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.  The burden of proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the officeholder.

The state is the servant and agent of higher ends. It is subordinate to society.  Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others.  Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

Recently, some 5 million Americans participated in a “No Kings” day protest, objecting to Donald Trump’s perceived arbitrary and capricious decision-making, his imperious fixation on self.  The slogan, “No Kings,” was shorthand for shouting out, “No Trump.”  It was an iteration in new words of the persistent assertion that he himself – not his ideas only – is a danger to democracy and a dictator in the making.

Opposition to abuse of kingly authority has a long history for Anglo-Americans.  In 1215, the barons of England imposed the Magna Carta on King John to restrain his personal authority.  In 1260 or so, Henry de Bracton, the first legal scholar commenting on English laws, set down the basis for a politics of “No Kings.”  In his treatise, he wrote in Latin: Ipse autem rex non debet esse sub homine sed sub deo et sub lege, quia les facit regem – “The king must not be under man, but under God and the law, for the law makes the king”; non est enim rex ubi doninatur voluntas et non lex – “There is no king where will rules and not law”; and Et ideo si rex fuerit sine fraeno, id est sine lege, debebt et fraenum apponere – “Also his curia, namely, the earls and barons, because if he is without a bridle, that is without law, they ought to put the bridle on him.”

Here, the rule is set down clearly: the law makes the king.  A king acting without the law – an outlaw – is no man to be obeyed.

Later, in 1399, King Richard II was deposed by the “earls and barons” and clergy of his realm.  One of the reasons for his being removed from his throne was written down as:

The King being not willing to maintain and protect the just laws and customs of the Realm, but endeavoring to gratify his pleasure in every thing, according to the arbitrariness of his Will, when the laws of the Kingdom were declared and expounded to him by his justices and others of his Counsel; and when they would desire him to administer justice to his subjects according to those laws, the King with a fierce and stern countenance, would tell them sometimes, that the laws were in his mouth, and at other times, that they were in his breast, and that he alone could make and alter the laws of his Kingdom; and being seduced by that opinion, would not suffer justice to be done to his subjects, but by his threats and menaces forced multitudes of his subjects to desist from the prosecution of their rights at the common law.

In March 1649, after they had won a civil war against King Charles I and executed him for willfully “traitorously and maliciously levying war against the present parliament and the people therein represented,” the Parliament abolished the office of king in England and all its dominions:

And whereas it is and hath been found by experience, that the Office of a King in this Nation and Ireland, and to have the power thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burthensom and dangerous to the liberty, safety and publique interest of the people, and that for the most part, use hath been made of the Regal power and prerogative, to oppress, and impoverish and enslave the Subject; and that usually and naturally any one person in such power, makes it his interest to incroach upon the just freedom and liberty of the people, and to promote the setting up of their own will and power above the Laws, that so they might enslave these Kingdoms to their own Lust; Be it therefore Enacted and Ordained by this present Parliament, and by Authority of the same, That the Office of a King in this Nation, shall not henceforth reside in, or be exercised by any one single person; and that no one person whatsoever, shall or may have, or hold the Office, Stile, Dignity, Power or Authority of King of the said Kingdoms and Dominions, or any of them, or of the Prince of Wales, Any Law, Statute, Usage or Custom to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.

This was a dramatic affirmation of the constitutional and political principle “No Kings.”

Yet, our world continues to witness and tolerate national leaders (rulers?) who act willfully on their own prerogative, without the law or having the laws come from within their conscience or out of their mouth.

The Caux Round Table, when drafting its Principles for Government, sided with the principle that “law makes the king.”  We proposed that the powers of an office – any office – are no more than responsibilities to act as a humble trustee of the common good, seeking above all else to benefit others.

Fundamental principle: Public power is held in trust for the community.

Power brings responsibility.  Power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds the actions of one to the welfare of others.

Therefore, the power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the community and its citizens.  Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold.  They have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.

Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office.  They are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.  The burden of proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the officeholder.

The state is the servant and agent of higher ends.  It is subordinate to society.  Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others.  Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

I just ran across a letter of June 28, 1985 – 40 years ago – which led to the foundation of the Caux Round Table.  The letter was sent by Frits Philips, former chairman of Philips, in Japan and a leader of Moral Re-Armament, an NGO advocating cross-culture value alignments and headquartered in Caux, Switzerland, to Mr. Yukihisa Fujita of Moral Re-Armament Japan.

Here is the letter:

The article, which Philips referred to, was a report of the Philips Electronics Company on “unfair” Japanese business practices.  It was as if Donald Trump had written it.  The Dutch reporter wrote after reading the report: “Japan is busy disrupting the international economy. Japan is lusting for world power.”

The accusation was that Japanese Zaibatsu industrial groups, coordinating with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, set out to crush competition in the making and selling of high value electronics.  Horrors!  A group of Japanese companies set out in the U.S. to break through into the American market for televisions by making and selling a color television that cost only $400.

Then, it was alleged, the alliance of Japanese companies used the profits from the sale of color televisions to subsidize the production of video cassette recorders to sell them abroad at a low price.  Thus, when Philips came out with a superior quality video cassette recorder, Japanese companies had 95% of the world market.

Having gained a virtual monopoly in the field of consumer electronics, the Philips report alleged that Japanese companies were getting ready to give a “neck chop” to their European competitors by setting product standards, selling at a cheap price and marketing their products.  The Japanese were also scheming to take American market share in the emerging product category of “professional electronics – monitors, telephone systems, copiers, home and personal computers.”

Their tactic was to subvert competitors with cheap prices.  First in components, then in high-grade sub-systems and finally, with the whole apparatus.  “The Japanese don’t mind foregoing profits for a while, provided that they can earn twice as much later on.”

Japan put difficulties in the way of permitting American companies to sell in Japan.  Japanese companies were financed up to 80 % or 90% of their total capital with low interest loans.

The Philip’s report considered increasing tariffs on imported Japanese electronics, noting that an import duty of 19% on compact disc players has given Philips room to become one of the largest makers of these machines in the world.  But Philips took losses up front on the manufacture and sale of CD players in order to gain market share.

Frits Philips and Yukihisa Fujita, with support from Moral Re-Armament, then convened the first meeting of what would become the Caux Round Table at Mountain House in Caux, Switzerland, in 1986 to discuss better rules and practices for international competition in free markets in all countries.