Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism
We make the case for Moral Capitalism.
We recently posted more short videos on relevant and timely topics. They include:
–On Time Magazine’s Best Companies List
–Could the Covenants Help in Gaza?
–Investment, Markets and ESG
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.
Please join us for an in-person round table over lunch at noon on Tuesday, December 19, at the Landmark Center in St. Paul on safety in schools and student character development with Ambrose Russell.
Ambrose is a member of the Minnesota Character Council. Ten years ago, he founded the Inner Hero Organization to work with youth in schools on becoming community leaders.
As “bad” behaviors when someone harms another become more and more to the fore in our communities – theft, assault, unsafe schools – we look for causes and for solutions.
Where public schools are concerned, one response, now questioned by many, is to place police or other law enforcers in schools.
But if the cause of “bad” behavior is a failure of character, the weakening of the moral sense, succumbing to fears and insecurities, the rise of self-referential values and disparagement of the “other,” then should not these causes of “bad” behavior be addressed, rather than responding to behavior as only symptoms?
What could be the constructive deployment of ethics in our schools to improve their safety for all students?
Cost to attend is $20 per person, which you can pay at the door.
Box lunches will be provided by Afro Deli.
To register, please email jed@cauxroundtable.net.
The event will last between an hour and hour and a half.
I want to share with you this letter, which I received last Friday, November 17, from Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State at the Vatican. I am grateful for his affirmation of our work.
It is your participation in the work of the Caux Round Table which justifies the Cardinal’s remarks about our including the different thoughts and perspectives of so many in seeking the common good.
Under the radar, the Caux Round Table has worked to find and advocate a better way of thinking about our politics than culture war.
To build a more moral capitalism, we must first determine what conditions are necessary to support such a system. A fundamental requirement is compatible politics and government.
No moral capitalism can emerge where there is corruption, abuse of law, rent-seeking everywhere you turn, concentration of power and wealth in elites – social, aristocratic, military, one-party authoritarianism.
Bad government for decades has prevented peoples from obtaining the personal and societal benefits of economic development. Bad government chokes the formation of good social capital and causes human capital to stagnate.
To counter the baleful influences of bad government, the Caux Round Table proposed ethical principles for moral government.
They might even improve our prospects for domestic tranquility here in the U.S.
We need your financial support to better advocate these simple principles for moral government. I hope you can make a contribution to our work.
You can donate on our Give to the Max page or directly through PayPal found on our homepage here (click yellow “donate” button).
If you rather mail a check, our mailing address is 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 219, St. Paul, MN 55102.
Thank you for your support.
Tomorrow, Thursday, November 16, is Give to the Max Day here in Minnesota.
The Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism needs your financial support to help us carry on the work that only we are doing. Here, I refer most to the study and advocacy in our time of the respect for others given by the Prophet Muhammad in his covenants with Christians and others.
The spirit behind these covenants and the example given to all Muslims of their Prophet’s good faith seem, at this time of war in Gaza, to be providential in giving us hope that a just outcome for all can be achieved.
I would like to share with you in this context some kind words sent to me by Pope Francis about our work.
On August 25, 2020, the secretary to Pope Francis wrote me this note:
His Holiness has read your letter and he has asked me to convey his appreciation for your underscoring the relevance of the covenants made by Muhammad in his day to protect Christian churches. He trusts that such covenants will serve as a model for the further enhancement of mutual respect, understanding and fraternal coexistence between Christians and Muslims at the present time.
On February 26, 2021, the secretary to Pope Francis wrote me this note:
Dear Professor Young,
I am writing to acknowledge your letter and enclosures that you sent on 19 January last to His Holiness Pope Francis concerning covenants made by the Prophet Muhammad to respect and protect Christian communities and to express His Holiness’ gratitude to you and your associates for making available this documentation.
You can contribute on our Give to the Max page or directly through PayPal found on our homepage here (click yellow “donate” button).
If you rather mail a check, our mailing address is 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 219, St. Paul, MN 55102.
Thank you for your support.
With trench warfare and attacks on civilians once again taking lives in Europe; with, once again, a religious war between Abrahamic faiths taking the lives of innocents in the Levant, what difference can the Caux Round Table make to counter such intolerance of others, such rejections of human aspirations for peace and justice?
With capitalism having just produced perhaps the most profound technical innovation ever, one which will disrupt all human purposing – AI – what difference can the Caux Round Table make to minimize harmful consequences attendant on the coming use of this technology?
Because we – our leadership, our staff, our global network of thoughtful participants – are doing unique innovative work that no one else seems to be attempting.
We are exploring and communicating globally premises for a global ethic in this time of anxiety and troubles. Our unique vantage point is the moral sense our participants have contributed since 1986 about business and finance, government, civil society and individual responsibility as what the Qur’an calls “khalifa-ship” and what my Protestant ancestors passed down to me as “stewardship.”
Tomorrow, Thursday, November 16, is Give to the Max day here in Minnesota, the annual fundraising campaign for local non-profits. We would be most appreciative if you would support our work.
You could also contribute directly to us through PayPal or by mailing a check to us at 75 West Fifth Street, Suite 219, St. Paul, MN 55102.
If you would like to give via wire transfer, please let us know so we can send you instructions.
Thank you for your past interest in the work all of us are committed to in our different ways and for your financial support at this time.
Recently, I read a new statement on freedom of speech and thought named The Westminster Declaration.
When, years ago, the Caux Round Table considered what kind of governance would be most supportive of moral capitalism, we proposed a set of ethical principles for governments. The first principle was reliance on discourse, not compulsion, to frame laws, regulations, policies and programs that will be enforced by the police power of the state. That principle states:
Discourse ethics should guide application of public power.
Public power, however allocated by constitutions, referendums or laws, shall rest its legitimacy in processes of communication and discourse among autonomous moral agents who constitute the community to be served by the government. Free and open discourse, embracing independent media, shall not be curtailed except to protect legitimate expectations of personal privacy, sustain the confidentiality needed for the proper separation of powers or for the most dire of reasons relating to national security.
The new Westminster Declaration endorses this moral standard and provides reasoned justification for that idealism.
You can read the declaration here.
In a recent antitrust lawsuit brought by sellers of houses in Missouri, a jury found that realtors had colluded to fix prices. The realtor association adopted and enforced rules which have kept the commissions house sellers pay to realtors for assisting with a sale of their real property intact as the market price of houses rises.
As a result, realtors get more money for the same work performed. A 6% commission as a fee for realtor service on a $100,000 house gives the realtor less cash than the same fee charged for assisting the sale of a $400,000 house.
The average price of a home in the U.S. as of July 2023 was $416,100. In 2000, the average price of a home was $119,600.
As housing prices have increased through no effort on the part of realtors, owners end up paying more in cash for retaining a realtor. What the realtor charges is set by rule, not by competitive market forces. This is rent extraction.
Adam Smith was very aware of the benefits to businesses of fixing prices in order to extract more money from society. He wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
The jury determined that realtors must return some $1.8 billion in commission fees to sellers of houses.
Here’s the October issue of Pegasus.
In this edition, we include a piece by Michael Hartoonian on wealth and happiness and another by me on the “way.”
I would be most interested in your thoughts and feedback.
Many of the critiques of “capitalism” point to the system itself, as if it were the only problem preventing us from enjoying wealth and social justice – and happiness. Or rather, the critics point to the system necessarily exploiting human nature – our lust for power and money at the expense of others.
Now, what if the shortcomings of capitalism – private property, free markets selling what buyers want and can afford, investment in new technologies – were not the fault of the system, but of distortions imposed on the system?
In particular, the injustices that accompany crony capitalism.
I argue that crony capitalism is a corrupting use of private property and markets, where non-market power structures gain the ability to extract rents. Where rents can be taken, rent-seeking is rewarded and so encouraged. Rent-seekers then arise to bend and twist capitalist mechanisms into structures of inequality, where those in power get richer and the rest look about for the crumbs that might fall their way.
The Economist, in a recent article, raised yet again, though indirectly, the question of the morality of capitalism. The magazine was looking at what it called “paranoid nationalism,” the practice of some regimes to ground their legitimacy on ethnicity or “groupiness,” the appeal for each of us to belong to a collective, be it ethnic (national) or religious. The collective provides us with values, beliefs, best social practices and a sense of personal meaning in a silent cosmos. We are, therefore, who we think we are. Our individual place in history derives from the history of our group.
The Economist argued that promoting “groupiness” with explicit fears of others and superiority over others is a malign human search for belonging and prestige. When people fear that their group is under threat, they rise to defend it, submitting to the claims of group loyalty. Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
As people become more and more submissive to such xenophobic leaders, the leaders themselves become more and more self-serving. The Economist argues that bigotry opens the door to misrule and corruption.
Using the following chart, some conclude that more nationalist rhetoric is associated with more corruption and less nationalist discourse aligns more with less corruption.
Simply put, nationalism promotes state capture and rent extraction by an in-group of defenders of the tribe’s psychic well-being.
