Category: Politics

Black Lives Matter and the St. Louis Verdict

The verdict of not guilty for a policeman that killed a black drug dealer a earlier this year has sparked new protest and riots in St. Louis. The video looked incriminating, but the trail judge could not see sufficient evidence for conviction.

It is sad to see the destruction of minority businesses as part of the protest! Such unbridled anger does not advance any good cause.

But I continue to believe that Black Lives Matter, but that the issues of the Black underclass are not served when the primary focus is on police behaviour. Rather, the problem is based in wrong analysis and the terrible abandonment of the black underclass community by the political leadership, both conservative and republican. The left continues to believe that if they pour in money they have done enough. The support the union schools and shut down alternatives. The right does not care and believes the lie that simply expanding the economy will reach all. Not true!

I still believe that the problem in the black underclass community is a massive need for education/discipleship. This has to include training in family values and discipline. We have to work to restore the black family. It includes a disciplined school environment that really educates and trains. It includes targeted tax policy that develops local businesses that employ. And it includes a massive police presence that makes drug dealing and violence impossible.

The anger is justified, but the analysis of the Black Lives Matter movement partially askew. But they are right to feel abandoned.

Leave your comments below and I’ll respond,

Daniel C. Juster

Completing Capitalism: Meeting Bruno Roche

One of my great pleasures in my week in Geneva was meeting Bruno Roche, one of the leaders of the Mars Incorporated. He has written a book called Completing Capitalism. If is one of the few books I have read that in my view applies Biblical principles to economics and business development in a solid way.

On my Facebook page, I have sometimes responded to my liberal friends with astonishment that they do not understand that socialism leads to greater poverty for the greatest number, at least over the long haul. But the answer is not unbridled capitalism. It is rather and incentivised capitalism that rewards business that expand opportunity for the many and share profit with the employees and not only maximizing profit for share holders and owners. The tax structure of nations should reflect this orientation. Roche and the Mars Incorporated are working on a model of capitalism that is heavy on the emphasis in human capital (human beings as the resource), social capital (the cohesiveness of human community and relationships in business) and finally resource and environmental capital. They actually develop metrics to measure such things, and also hold out for patterns of compensation that are fair to the risk taking business leader, the employees and that seeks to expand opportunity in poor communities around the world.

I think they are getting at the truth. The answer is not socialism and leveling, nor is it greedy and abusive capitalism, but is a new humane capitalism. I greatly recommend this book.