The Greater Reset: a Case for a Paradigm Shift

Listen to The Greater Reset by Michael D. Greaney, Dawn K. Brohawn on Audible. https://www.audible.com/pd/B09T88Q9FB?source_code=ASSOR1500219210011

My father is 92. I've had a front row seat to his efforts to change the system.

The Greater Reset represents the next generation authoring a manuscript, with the potential to reach a wider audience. Running short on time, my dad has expressessed frustration that I have not been engaged enough, and that Dawn and Michael's book does not go far enough in calling for the kinds of structural reform our democracy needs if we are to avoid Civil War or collapse of our political system.

The Greater Reset is a mindnumbingly ambitious undertaking. CESJ represents a merger of the teachings of Fr William Ferree on social justice and Louis Kelso's framework for enabling non-owners to become owners without taking anything from existing owners, while overcoming the tyranny of past savings. It makes a case for the proposed Economic Democracy Act and explains in some detail how to create an ownership society, and by the way, it proposes a new Papal Encyclical on Economic Justice.

The book uses a competing vision, The Great Reset, effectively as a foil. It explains the philosophical roots of Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, and explains how their well-intended scheme would continue patterns of increased monopolization of wealth producing assets. Schwab and Malleret's declaration that in the future, nobody would own anything and you will like it, is challenged as a threat to individual liberty.

Honestly, if it had not been on Audible, the book would have collected dust -- my mind said, too difficult -- but I listened and was a little stunned how well it held my attention. Despite some of its flaws, the authors succeeded in getting my attention and building my anticipation for their next book. I even spoke about it to the local candidate who was going door to door for signatures yesterday in the bitter cold. Deja vu.

Around the time I began my freshman year at Georgetown University in 1981, my dad, mom, sister, her husband Rowland, the late Bill Schirra, Fr. William Ferree, and a few others founded the Center For Economic and Social Justice (CESJ) in a cafeteria at American University.

Having worked at at Employee-Owned company for over 15 years after graduating from college in 1985, I've benefitted financially from principles of economic justice and it's application in a leveraged ESOP, in a company that shared profits. I have also seen how hard it is to maintain a viable  ownership culture in a going concern as a company undergoes rapid growth.. When I left in 2001, despite having earned considerable income, it felt like a failure.

Now I am a Special Education Teacher. I see entire communities who enter middle school with little to no phonemic awareness or skill in phonics, who cannot add or subtract, and do not know their multiplication facts. Many are on free and reduced lunch. We provide free education, but few are accessing it fully. We expect students to access a standard curriculum without providing the means of accessing it.

When a democracy becomes as unbalanced as exists today, widespread alienation becomes a natural result. I eagerly await the next book, Own or Be Owned.