Do you know about Distributism?

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It has its roots in a very agricultural/traditional economic model. It doesn’t say “don’t buy a reaping machine; everyone needs to hand-scythe the wheat.” Instead, it encourages the people who reap the wheat to be the ones who actually own the land, rather than treating migrant workers like slaves. It makes the economic pie complicated and diverse enough so that when bird flu hits, it doesn’t affect 50 million hens in one shot.

But the Guild System has always fiercely protected its secrets. 🙂 It doesn’t mean that everyone has to share their 11 Secret Spices recipe, or their formula for Coke, or whatever. A better analogy is the liquor industry-- it (is? was?) hard for breweries to ship across state lines. So I had a friend who had visited Boston, and had loved a particular beer… but that beer wasn’t available in Texas; you had to get to Massachusetts to be able to buy it. You still can’t buy Yuengling in Texas, but it’s very popular in Pennsylvania. You can’t buy Shinerbock in Utah. etc. And then there’s all the “real” craft beers, that are pretty much only available onsite at their breweries’ shop.

That’s not to say that everyone has to shovel manure or work in a factory. There’s still plenty of desk jobs. But if you’ve ever been laid off to “streamline” operations-- or ever lived in an area with significant unemployment-- or lived in an area that’s very welfare-dependent-- or just live in a rural area with a fragile economy, period, it’s much easier to grasp the appeal of this kind of system. Because you’re always looking around and thinking, “What kind of business could I start that could bring some jobs to this area?” but things are skewed towards massive mega-corporations that work nationally or globally (the Tyson chicken plant! the Quaker Oats mill! the Apple headquarters!), rather than the traditional locally-based businesses that employ five or ten people to do something small and niche-y… but you’ve got fifty of them to choose from.
 
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It’s a good reminder. Not everyone is cut out to run a biz. And some people would like to just punch a clock and leave work at 5:00 on Friday and not think about work again until 8:00 Monday. 🙂 There is something to be said for that! 😛
 
I am a pure capitalist. The ONLY monopolies that exist today are through government regulations. BTW, who get to decide the price of moderately priced land? I can promise anyone that believes the world would be a better place if we all went back to farming, have never farmed.
 
But distributism isn’t saying, “Everyone become a farmer.” Distributism is saying, “If you have a factory that makes doohickeys, the people working in the factory should own the means of production-- the land it sits on, the building the machines are in, the machinery itself.”

With risk comes reward. Not everyone can deal with risk. Some people enjoy the safety of their paychecks and the peacefulness of not bringing the office home with them at the end of the day. And that’s okay. 🙂
 
I feel strongly that ideologies based on concepts such as distributism, socialism and communism are a geopolitical forms of theft. I group these together because they are not dissimilar in redistributing goods from one class to another. Indeed, charity forced is theft.
 
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TheOldColonel said:
I feel strongly that ideologies based on concepts such as distributism, socialism and communism are a geopolitical forms of theft. I group these together because they are not dissimilar in redistributing goods from one class to another. Indeed, charity forced is theft.
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Distributism is voluntary, there is no force involved, whatever gave you that idea? Socialism and Communism are forced and from the top down, distributism is the from the ground up and voluntary. Local communities agree on prices of land, distribution of wealth etc, it doesn’t work without consensus.

Communism and socialism don’t care if there is consensus, they will take your stuff whether you want to share or not.
 
“The people who argue that “capitalism works” are the same people who argue that we should have less government interference in the market. Now, I am all for less government; however, the plain fact of the matter is that capitalism cannot function without this interference; capitalism relies on an expanded state to balance aggregate supply and demand. Consider this fact: in the period from 1853 to 1953, the economy was in recession or depression fully 40% of the time. Since 1953, that is, since the economy became fully Keynesian, the economy has been in recession only 15% of the time. 3 Moreover, the pre-war recessions were, on average, twice as deep and twice as long as the post-war ones.”
 
Just where might we study a real-life working model of that?
 
Many countries in Eastern Europe except Hungary. Romania is a good example.
 
You must be referring to the satellite states of the former Soviet Union.
 
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I see your point. All westerners long to achieve the level of prosperity known only in Eastern Europe.
 
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TheOldColonel said:
I see your point. All westerners long to achieve the level of prosperity known only in Eastern Europe.
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I used to live in Poland for a year, they were not affected by the 2009 recession, I had no problem getting a job there.

Since you know about the Soviet union, you may also know that the Western “German Republic”'s eastern region is still not as developed, yet it adopted the same policy as the rest of the country.

Communism ruined the east, not distributism.
 
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Do your own research if you’re skeptical, but distributism has nothing to do with communism or socialism, not even on the same end of the spectrum. Its main idea is to oppose socialism and communism.
 
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Thank you. I go find outdated, drab computer on which to research impressive topic.
 
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