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anon65111186
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What if you could still mass produce under distributism?Making everything smaller could lead to significant problems if we ever needed stuff quickly mass produced. Also, you start running into economy of scale issues.
Further, who gets to determine what is and is not socially just as far as income, housing, transportation, etc. is concerned?
And if there was a great answer to socially just wages etc? If they figured out all those questions?
I or we don’t have the answers but neither did those who started capitalism.
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Seeksadvice
Guest
Who decides what is “socially just”? Sorry, but you can’t have a barely literate floor sweeper making what say a mechanical engineer who is designing products that the business makes.
If there is no personal incentive to do better, where is the incentive to make more, make better, etc.?
Who do you take from to redistribute to the people who won’t work?
Who has to pay when the people who have no long-term thought processes at all, use their distributions to buy drugs, booze, and hookers?
If there is no personal incentive to do better, where is the incentive to make more, make better, etc.?
Who do you take from to redistribute to the people who won’t work?
Who has to pay when the people who have no long-term thought processes at all, use their distributions to buy drugs, booze, and hookers?
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Athanasiy
Guest
According to the solidarist labor economist Goetz Briefs, a student of Fr. Heinrich Pesch, S.J., “large groups of workers today have no objection to raise against propertylessness - provided their jobs are secure, their wages sufficient, and provisions are made through social insurance for old age and unemployment.” The problem is that as public debt mounts and economies crumble, all these things are at risk - where they haven’t disappeared entirely. What is the solution?
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anon65111186
Guest
Who decides what is “socially just”? Sorry, but you can’t have a barely literate floor sweeper making what say a mechanical engineer who is designing products that the business makes.
Distributism is about spreading property ownership as widely as possible, it would be shared equal according to the pie, not according to the individual. The bigger the pie, the bigger the share, as far as I understand.
Distributism is about spreading property ownership as widely as possible, it would be shared equal according to the pie, not according to the individual. The bigger the pie, the bigger the share, as far as I understand.
My question is : Does owning property take away incentive to make more?If there is no personal incentive to do better, where is the incentive to make more, make better, etc.?
It’s not taken from anyone, it is given to everyone, not on the basis of merit. After they get their share, they are more on their own I would think.Who do you take from to redistribute to the people who won’t work?
Then they have to take responsibility, and don’t get any more distribution. Just as now, charities can help with those people, but I think, so long as they try to better themselves.Who has to pay when the people who have no long-term thought processes at all, use their distributions to buy drugs, booze, and hookers?
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philipl
Guest
True capitalism is the only acceptable system. When people say they are against capitalism after reading what they write they should be saying state capitalism. for example., When Obama bailed out the auto industry or when Reagan gave chysler a bail out. Never should have happened. Government should never create laws that create monopolies. Think utilities. If we had pure capitalism, then distributism would be more likely to happen. It would be more decentralized
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SuperLuigi
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I think a lot of this is driven by Catholics who are afraid of being on almost the exact same page as the American right.
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anon65111186
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That’s what I’m talking about decentralization, and subsidiarity. I think we still would need federal law though, which some governors and mayors flaunt, and refuse to uphold the law.If we had pure capitalism, then distributism would be more likely to happen. It would be more decentralized
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Seeksadvice
Guest
You have to take from those who do/make to give to those that don’t. In order to grow the pie, you have to have somebody actually doing something. Bob does a 60 hour work week. John, who could work a 60 hour week, elects to smoke a bowl for 60 hours a week. Guess who is contributing to the size of the pie? Is it fair and just to take from Bob to give to John? The pie doesn’t get magically bigger by itself.
One thing that’s interesting… you can distribute stuff “equally,” and, guess what… the distribution becomes unequal very quickly. Let’s take Bob and John, and “equally” distribute the income such that it would be as if both worked 30 hour weeks. John’s income from Bob is going to go to John’s pot dealer. Meanwhile, Bob, who could have invested that extra money to gain returns for himself, possibly help his children go to college, etc. now no longer has those opportunities.
I really don’t understand why, with all of this discussion of distributivism, there isn’t reference to the line those who do not work shall not eat.
One thing that’s interesting… you can distribute stuff “equally,” and, guess what… the distribution becomes unequal very quickly. Let’s take Bob and John, and “equally” distribute the income such that it would be as if both worked 30 hour weeks. John’s income from Bob is going to go to John’s pot dealer. Meanwhile, Bob, who could have invested that extra money to gain returns for himself, possibly help his children go to college, etc. now no longer has those opportunities.
I really don’t understand why, with all of this discussion of distributivism, there isn’t reference to the line those who do not work shall not eat.
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anon65111186
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Distributism is not about distributing wealth or a hand out, what gave you that idea?
It is about owning the means of production, not income for all.
Someone talked about mass production.
Even though monopolies can greatly reduce the cost of production, the means of doing so are often at the expense of the society (lower wages, out-sourced production, loss of local jobs, etc.), while making high profits for themselves.
I agree that each should produce to eat, and it’s not about a free lunch, it’s about moderately priced land so you can build a farm to make your own lunch.
It is about owning the means of production, not income for all.
Someone talked about mass production.
Even though monopolies can greatly reduce the cost of production, the means of doing so are often at the expense of the society (lower wages, out-sourced production, loss of local jobs, etc.), while making high profits for themselves.
I agree that each should produce to eat, and it’s not about a free lunch, it’s about moderately priced land so you can build a farm to make your own lunch.
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twf
Guest
The Republican Party advocates for distributism rather than capitalism? That’s news to me.
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anon65111186
Guest
Some have, and most agree with principle of subsidiarity, doing things at the local rather than federal level when possible.The Republican Party advocates for distributism rather than capitalism?
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Seeksadvice
Guest
Ah, okay… so, it’s basically communism with a different name slapped on it.
RE: moderately priced land to build farm to make own lunch. Okay… let’s give everybody 40 acres and a mule. You have any idea what the net effect of that would be on the world’s food supply? I live in North Dakota, the #1 producer of wheat, canola, flax, sometimes barley, and a host of other things in the United States. You don’t produce that much stuff from everybody having a dinky little farm. Folks farm out here by the sections (640 acres)x quite a few. A section is roughly 1 square mile of land. Guess what happens to prices if land is split up into tiny little farms while the demand stays high… you don’t get cheap crop prices.
The farmer’s location where I shoot at doesn’t have a backstop because you can’t really shoot off of it anything available to the civilian market; and that’s the shorter end of his property. Another farmer who I hunt pheasants on his land has ~5,200 acres. Those aren’t the “big” operations in the state either. A couple thousand acres of durum is a lot of wheat.
Humanity already has epidemics, wars, etc. because we have over population in areas that cannot sustain the population. That would only get worse carving things up into postage stamp sized farms.
RE: moderately priced land to build farm to make own lunch. Okay… let’s give everybody 40 acres and a mule. You have any idea what the net effect of that would be on the world’s food supply? I live in North Dakota, the #1 producer of wheat, canola, flax, sometimes barley, and a host of other things in the United States. You don’t produce that much stuff from everybody having a dinky little farm. Folks farm out here by the sections (640 acres)x quite a few. A section is roughly 1 square mile of land. Guess what happens to prices if land is split up into tiny little farms while the demand stays high… you don’t get cheap crop prices.
The farmer’s location where I shoot at doesn’t have a backstop because you can’t really shoot off of it anything available to the civilian market; and that’s the shorter end of his property. Another farmer who I hunt pheasants on his land has ~5,200 acres. Those aren’t the “big” operations in the state either. A couple thousand acres of durum is a lot of wheat.
Humanity already has epidemics, wars, etc. because we have over population in areas that cannot sustain the population. That would only get worse carving things up into postage stamp sized farms.
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midori
Guest
Actually, a lot of the major writings on distributism were written within ten years of either side of WWI. You have Rerum Novarum in 1891, of course, (aka Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor) by Pope Leo XIII, but on the secular side of the spectrum, you’ve got Belloc’s Servile State from 1912. You’ve got Chesterton’s What’s Wrong With the World (1910), Utopia of Userers (and Other Essays) (1917), and Outline of Sanity (1926).
A lot of the people who were behind it weren’t actually Catholics, but they were radical socialists who were disillusioned with socialism. You still get Catholic collectives, like the Catholic Worker Movement.
But I’d say that between the turmoil in Europe after the Great War, where you lost an entire generation of young men (and, ergo, an economic system with an emphasis on traditional/agrarian values is difficult in the absence of all those people), the consolidation of so much federal power under FDR across the Atlantic in the 1930’s, and then WWII all coming in a very short space of time— those were a few major things that prevented distributism from flourishing as much as it could have.
A lot of the people who were behind it weren’t actually Catholics, but they were radical socialists who were disillusioned with socialism. You still get Catholic collectives, like the Catholic Worker Movement.
But I’d say that between the turmoil in Europe after the Great War, where you lost an entire generation of young men (and, ergo, an economic system with an emphasis on traditional/agrarian values is difficult in the absence of all those people), the consolidation of so much federal power under FDR across the Atlantic in the 1930’s, and then WWII all coming in a very short space of time— those were a few major things that prevented distributism from flourishing as much as it could have.
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anon65111186
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It doesn’t take from anyone because that would be stealing and makes it easier to have land and things to produce wealth with that people actually own. Communism is about the state owning everything and citizens owning nothing.Ah, okay… so, it’s basically communism with a different name slapped on it.
Not even close. It is not about divying upland or the like, just having a system where each can have land of one’s own , it doesn’t specify the size.
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midori
Guest
Also remember that distributism was very much an English social idea. Belloc, for example, became a naturalized British subject in 1902, while retaining his French citizenship, and Chesterton was British as well.
So, look at the history of Britain in order to comprehend where distributism came from.
What major shift in land ownership took place? How about the Dissolution of the Monasteries? So all of a sudden, you have these Church lands that are widely scattered to support over 850 different monasteries/priories/convents/friaries, and poof! All of a sudden, the King says, “These are mine. And I’ll give them to who I please.” And who did it please him to give them to? To the nobility and aristocracy. It took four years to shut down over 800 of those 850 establishments. They had owned about one third of all the land in England and Wales.
What else was happening in the centuries prior to the Dissolution? The Guild System was developing and flourishing. A lot of the great estates had been broken up prior to the Norman Invasion. The population tripled in the 200 years between the time of the Domesday Book (1086) and 1300. The economy exploded, too. Things were definitely rough during the Plague and the Famine, but they recovered. And things were ticking along pretty well for a lot of people…
…and then a third of the land got taken up and given to people who already were major landowners. And poof. You lost your hostels. You lost your schools. You lost your hospitals. The poor lost a significant safety-net. The government struggled to do what the Church used to do.
Then about 200 years later, you get the Industrial Revolution. It leads to a giant middle class… but this middle class is made up of factory workers who work long hours in grueling conditions for pennies. They don’t have the same access to proportional profits as, say, the Guild System that used to be in place, because the laborers aren’t the ones who own the factories.
So, look at the history of Britain in order to comprehend where distributism came from.
What major shift in land ownership took place? How about the Dissolution of the Monasteries? So all of a sudden, you have these Church lands that are widely scattered to support over 850 different monasteries/priories/convents/friaries, and poof! All of a sudden, the King says, “These are mine. And I’ll give them to who I please.” And who did it please him to give them to? To the nobility and aristocracy. It took four years to shut down over 800 of those 850 establishments. They had owned about one third of all the land in England and Wales.
What else was happening in the centuries prior to the Dissolution? The Guild System was developing and flourishing. A lot of the great estates had been broken up prior to the Norman Invasion. The population tripled in the 200 years between the time of the Domesday Book (1086) and 1300. The economy exploded, too. Things were definitely rough during the Plague and the Famine, but they recovered. And things were ticking along pretty well for a lot of people…
…and then a third of the land got taken up and given to people who already were major landowners. And poof. You lost your hostels. You lost your schools. You lost your hospitals. The poor lost a significant safety-net. The government struggled to do what the Church used to do.
Then about 200 years later, you get the Industrial Revolution. It leads to a giant middle class… but this middle class is made up of factory workers who work long hours in grueling conditions for pennies. They don’t have the same access to proportional profits as, say, the Guild System that used to be in place, because the laborers aren’t the ones who own the factories.
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midori
Guest
So, that’s where they’re coming from. They realize that unless people work hard to keep the economic pie deliberately fragmented into a thousand pieces, it ultimately consolidates into a pie of only five or ten pieces. And so five or ten people get massive wealth… but the rest of the population just gets their pennies for their day’s work. Whether it’s a third of the land getting seized and redistributed to favored people, or whether it’s the factory owners consolidating power in their own hands, the natural way for things is for successful people to build on their own success and eliminate the competition, thereby further building on their own success…
But with distributism, you get ten thousand distilleries making whiskey, so that it’s not just your choice of Jack Daniels vs Jim Beam vs Wild Turkey. Or you get half a million egg farms scattered throughout the country, each serving its own area, rather than Cal-Maine having 36 million hens, and Rose Acre Farms having 25 million hens, and Michael Foods having 13 million hens, etc. Average herd size was 19 cows per dairy in 1970 (back when there were 12 million cows), but is 120 cows per dairy today (with over 9 million dairy cows), although the largest dairy has 15,000 cows. There are 43,000 dairies in the US today… there were 648,000 dairies in 1970, and 75,000 dairies in 2006.
So, even in our lifetimes, we see how biz continues to consolidate, so that fewer and fewer and fewer people get pieces from the economic pie… But those guys figured it out 100 years ago and tried to warn us.
But with distributism, you get ten thousand distilleries making whiskey, so that it’s not just your choice of Jack Daniels vs Jim Beam vs Wild Turkey. Or you get half a million egg farms scattered throughout the country, each serving its own area, rather than Cal-Maine having 36 million hens, and Rose Acre Farms having 25 million hens, and Michael Foods having 13 million hens, etc. Average herd size was 19 cows per dairy in 1970 (back when there were 12 million cows), but is 120 cows per dairy today (with over 9 million dairy cows), although the largest dairy has 15,000 cows. There are 43,000 dairies in the US today… there were 648,000 dairies in 1970, and 75,000 dairies in 2006.
So, even in our lifetimes, we see how biz continues to consolidate, so that fewer and fewer and fewer people get pieces from the economic pie… But those guys figured it out 100 years ago and tried to warn us.
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Seeksadvice
Guest
The pie always consolidates. Sorry, but that’s the way it works.
Basically sounds like in order to try to give everybody “something,” it ensures that progress is not rewarded. What if one of those 10,000 distilleries through hardwork and effort discovers a better process that makes better tasting whiskey. Should that one distillery be forced to give up its trade secret so that the others have it?
RE dairies. Let’s see here… it takes work to tend cattle; we have folks in our office who run ranches. Having one ranch/dairy instead of a dozen frees up people to do other things.
Basically sounds like in order to try to give everybody “something,” it ensures that progress is not rewarded. What if one of those 10,000 distilleries through hardwork and effort discovers a better process that makes better tasting whiskey. Should that one distillery be forced to give up its trade secret so that the others have it?
RE dairies. Let’s see here… it takes work to tend cattle; we have folks in our office who run ranches. Having one ranch/dairy instead of a dozen frees up people to do other things.
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Athanasiy
Guest
In one of my lectures on marketing, I touch on a topic that can be applied to thinking about " distributism"
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Athanasiy
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