Thought-provoking!

I was recently contemplating the success of Newman’s Own, which is not-for-profit. They are helping to dethrone the God of the Marketplace, inadvertently, of course, by showing that there are other successful business models out there. They don’t use donations (like your philanthropic model), but they are also not purely capitalistic. After all, any profits generated go to educational charities! Their year-end balance sheet says Zero, after paying the workers and their overhead costs. And I _like_ to buy from them, because 1) They use higher-quality ingredients (no big-ag garbage products, like high-fructose corn syrup), and 2) They are good citizens.

If enough businesses like Newman’s Own, and that SAME Cafe, etc crop up, then folks will realize that they have been worshipping a False God all these years…

I noticed that you left out the link under “A Just Economy”.

I also noticed that you could have made an even _stronger_ case for how people fill their time without working using the couple in question (whom we both know), by looking at how they filled their time immediately after he retired.

First, he found an anthropology museum associated with an academic department at UPenn that needed volunteers. He went in a couple of times per week, and helped them to organize their records (which were a complete disaster–they asked him to make some sense of the photos from a coffee-table book that had been published, by pointing to a filing cabinet drawer, which was just a heap of photographs. He figured out which photo was of which item in the book, and which photos were extras, but of the same objects (or different ones) and created a cross-referenced database and filing system, so that the photos could be found by those looking either for an example of artifact X or by asking for the photo from a certain page number. A month after he finished, all of those museums got looted in the Middle East, from the region that this book had been about, and soon artifacts began turning up on the black market, and when the museum was called for photos of objects from the book, they were able to immediately send high-quality copies of not only the photos from the book, but other views of the same objects as well, to prove whether or not the items for sale were lost museum treasures. He did all of this with no pay, and derived a deep satisfaction from being able to help.).

Next, he got involved with another volunteer group associated with the same museum, which goes out into inner city schools with real artifacts, and does interactive teaching with the items, having the kids figure out what they items could be used for, then launching into a lesson on the culture and people who used them. This was also not for pay.

He still does these two things.

He also spent some time working with a charity involved in helping those with HIV; he no longer does that.

He recently did a bit of business consulting, yes, but he is going to be quitting soon, as it was too much stress, and not worth the pay.

Meanwhile, he and his wife also volunteer at a local homeless shelter on a regular basis. They devote one lunch hour every few weeks to being on the soup kitchen serving line (open to all in the area who are hungry), and every couple of months, they prepare a dinner and serve it to the residents, donating all of the food. Keep in mind that the wife is a caterer; we are talking about the _best_ food ever served at a homeless shelter! She makes food like she is being paid for it, because nothing less would seem hollow and unsatisfying to her. They both derive great satisfaction from helping those in need who are in turn trying to turn their lives around. (This is the best shelter in the area, has a time-cap to the number of weeks one can stay, and has job-training programs and counseling services. They picked this shelter as the one to help because it did the most effective job at helping the homeless who get in.)

He is writing a book for the fun of it, not because he thinks he has any chance whatsoever of getting it published.

He is delving into tracing his family’s ancestry, to be able to pass down the information to his descendants.

These are the activities of someone who does not earn money for a living, but boy, does he produce value for his family and for the greater community!