The launch of our latest book, The Traumatised Society: How to Outlaw Cheating and Save our Civilisation was held in St James’s Church, Piccadilly on 28th October. The author, Fred Harrison, explained the threat to Western civilisation from rent-seeking, which he identified as the cause of the collapse of great civilisations in the past.
The opening paragraph of an article by John Kay in the Financial Times (27th Dec 2009) gives a succinct explanation of rent-seeking: ‘You can become wealthy by creating wealth or by appropriating the wealth created by other people. When the appropriation of the wealth is illegal it is called theft or fraud. When it is legal economists call it rent-seeking.’
Harrison identifies rent-seeking as cheating and shows how it may be outlawed so that our civilisation need not suffer the same fate as others. To avoid the unpleasant consequences of that fate, he advocates a great awakening because we cannot rely on politicians, policy-makers and economists to lead us out of danger. We have to take our future into our own hands.
‘Many people are all too aware that there is something badly wrong with our current economic system, but they are less clear about how it got so bad, what an alternative might look like, and how we can make the change. This profound book admirably fills that gap.’ Bernadette Meaden in Ekklesia
The launch was the first in a series of events to help stimulate the great awakening. Future events already scheduled are:
January 26th 2013 School of Economic Science, 11 Mandeville Place, London W1U 3AJ
April 6th 2013 St Mary Aldermary, City of London
May 4th 2013 Christ Church Blackfriars Rd. London SE1
June 1st 2013, St James, Piccadilly, London W1
Extracts from the Traumatised Society were read by the actors, Jemma Redgrave, Jennifer Wiltsie and Carlo Nero (Vanessa Redgrave’s son).
