Do you know about Distributism?

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timothy, I am not arguing that distributionism does not follow principles laid out in Rerum Novaram. But Leo XIII did not teach it by any name. Note: by saying this I am not arguing against distributionism. Only saying lets not overstate the Church’s teaching of it.
You can also read (and it is a very good read) the Compendium of Social Doctrine of the Church, published under the pontificate of John Paul II, and you will not find distributionism taught. But again, you will find that most flavors of distributionism are inline with that document’s principles also.

One has to look at Chesterton and Belloc as the “fathers” of distributionism. But they didn’t get everything right, just a lot. And one could not move immediately towards a distributionist economic system without going through some sort of revolution (my opinion, not theirs). And that would not be a good thing. Chesterton and Belloc may not have been opposed, but I would be. So we have to look at our to transform our system towards that over time.
 
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ChunkMonk said:
Consider this fact, the technological and economic expansion of the period between 1853 amd 1953 has yet to be matched.

Mark Steyn talks about this. Look around your house. You have 2 main items that were not in the average American home in the 50s. A computer and a cell phone. The man in the 50s looked around his house and every thing in it was different than what the man in 1888 had in his.
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True, but the question is - did cell phones and computers, along with other technology cause the economy to not go in recession as much, or did it just happen to exist in a time when it didn’t go into recession as much.

i.e. is it causative or correlative? Obviously, cell phones and computers don’t recession proof an economy.
 
I agree, and know what you meant. I was just emphasizing that those documents have authority, and uphold those theories that build upon it, such as distributionism and its varieties.

There may not be a revolution where we replace capitalism with distributionism, or even the parts of our soceity which are socialist with distributionism, but over time we can.
 
If you want a share in production then buy shares in the company.

No one stops people from doing so.

Of course there are risks and every company at some stage will be doomed to collapse because other companies will outcompete them and in doing so make things more efficiently for the betterment of society.

That is one of the great benefits of capitalism. Things don’t stay the same, they get better. And they get better because people are allowed to benefit from making things better.
 
  1. Who decides on territories? That can be decided in any number of ways. The easiest thing is “whatever makes sense.” For example, even today-- for my eggs, I buy them from the farmer, because I’m an egg snob. If I want non-homogenized low-pasteurized milk or raw milk, I buy it from the farm. If I want pattypan squash, I go to the farmer’s market. At the other end of the spectrum, you have your guilds, which ensured a particular standard of quality in a certain area. So taking another path, you may end up with a Baked Bean Guild that oversees baked beans in their territory, just like attorneys in Louisiana aren’t able to practice law in Alaska, or like Blue Cross Blue Shield Virginia can’t sell health insurance in Tennessee.
  2. If Joe Schmo wants to open his baked beans factory 20 miles away from mine, that’s fine. He can do that. Distributism isn’t the elimination of competition; distributism is the encouragement of small-and-local biz. Unless, of course, the North Texas Baked Beans Guild decides to get involved and only allows a finite number of baked bean factory permits to be issued in their territory. 😉 Then Joe can go get into the canned chili market. Or the Beanie-Weenie market. Or the canned green bean market. Or whatever.
  3. Distribution territory is the same question as 1.
  4. What if Joe’s baked beans are bad? Then he fails. Because running a biz has risk! And not everyone is cut out for risk! Which is okay! Distributism doesn’t say that everyone has to be bootstrappy. Some people aren’t wired to run a biz. Some people are happy working for other people. And that’s okay, too. But distributism encourages an economic culture where the people who own the biz are the ones who work the biz, and the ones who directly profit from it— versus your Bush’s Baked Beans CEO, who earns a $10.8M salary, but also hires people who work the factory for $7.25/hr. Or the Heinz CEO, who earns a $1M salary, a $2.7M bonus, and restricted stock valued at $1.4M.
  5. Inspectors are part of the regulatory body. It would follow the law. But you realize that big corporations have made regulations very, very onerous in the last 20, 30, 40 years. Which is why you had 648,000 dairies almost 50 years ago, and why you have only 43,000 dairies today. And so one of the points would be to stop discouraging people who are bootstrappy enough to want to go into business for themselves by coming up with onerous regulations to deliberately make things unprofitable for anyone who can’t operate at a particular scale.
  6. Online ordering is fine. If I go visit Boston, and I love their baked beans, it’s okay if I get some shipped to me in the mail. Unless, of course, our overlords decide to say that you can’t ship baked beans across state lines. Like you can’t with wine, or automatic knives, some plants and animals, etc, etc, etc. 😉 Because you do have to watch out for those protectionist Guilds looking out to protect their peeps. 😉
 
Ignoring state compulsion, large companies that produce things usually get large because they are better at making things more efficiently than lots of smaller companies.

Nobody is forced to buy from them but if you don’t then you typically have to purchase the goods at a much higher price.

People always have the choice to go into business together at the local level and make things. The reality is that some groups will be better at these things than others, They will make the same product more efficiently and thus cheaper and those are the businesses which will expand and become bigger so that more people will enjoy the same product for less cost.

No one is stopping voluntary local co-operativies from forming under capitalism.

If they work they tend to grow, if they don’t they tend to fail.

The only way to stop this is to have government intervention which is socialism and it doesn’t work. It makes everyone poorer.
 
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I wasn’t clear. The Keynesian system eliminates some recessions. It also eliminates a lot of booms. The technological and economic expansion of the Industrial Revolution is totally unmatched by any other period in history.

The government can prevent some people from losing only at the cost of preventing everyone from winning.
 
Distributism in its pure form is another off shoot of communism. And like communism it won’t work. Why? it is in the description.

“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”

So I work in a shop in which the items I make have a very high profit margin. You work in a plant that produces an item with a very low profit making. Your plant employees hundreds of employees and because the profit margin is so low the work is boring. Now my shop isn’t so hard to work in cause we have some money to burn cause there is only 30 or 40 workers. So you go outside for a break and see me goofing off with my co workers. You want a job, but I tell you that we only hire highly skilled artist we make doohickeys and since you make widgets you don’t have the right skill sets. plus so many people love their jobs at doohickey no one every leave unless they die. Old johnson doesn’t look to good but when he goes his son is trained and waiting.
 
Because there has to be a strong central government controlling every aspect of the economy.
 
But how does an economic model that thrives on the privately held possession of private property by private individuals have anything to do with communism?

Communism is all about everything being owned by everyone— but ultimately controls everything through a single totalitarian party. Communism, in theory, is all about wealth being shared by the masses based on the needs of the individual… but just look at how it turned out for the North Koreans. 😉 Communism wants to eradicate capitalism and personal property-- look at Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

None of that has anything to do with distributism. Have any of y’all ever started a business? Have any of y’all read your Belloc or your Chesterton? They go out of their way to contrast Distributism with both Capitalism and Socialism and show its differences, and how it was used in the past, and what caused it to fail.
 
I think distributism is a charming idea! It may have worked 100-200 years ago. I think society is way too complex, there are tons of laws about business regulations, taxes,etc. Tell you what – everybody that wants to live according to distributism can go live on 40 acres and be a homesteader. I don’t think our economic system can go backwards in time to distributism without a controlling central government.
 
I agree. 🙂 I do what I can, where I’m at. 🙂 And I try to do what I can to help others as well, because I live in a small, rural community with a very fragile economy. But it can be frustrating, to see up-close-and-personal that the deck is very much stacked against the success of an ordinary group of people successfully pursuing a lot of business opportunities that used to be traditionally viable opportunities that would help a local economy thrive.

 
I agree – it’s not easy to start and run s business. And I am sure it was easier 50-100 years ago. However, I have to reiterate that the “remedy” would be worse than the problem, at this point.
 
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Hilaire Belloc/G. K. Chesterton
 
Because it is not privately held. It is held by everyone so no one owns it. How does a person sell their share?
 
No no no no no.

So, suppose I have three cows and five acres. And my neighbor has one cow and fifty acres. And we decide to team up together to form Happy Hill Dairy. And we sell milk to the people in the town down the road, who aren’t allowed to keep cows inside the city limits. The cows belong to us. The milk belongs to us. The biz doesn’t belong to anyone but us. We have our dairy— and there are tens of thousands of people like us, who have a small business with a very limited scope, but between the milk and the cheese and the butter, we’re able to make a good living working for ourselves, not for Borden.

Or suppose I have a riding lawnmower and a chainsaw. And my friend has a weedeater and a polesaw. We decide to go into business and form the Sunny Days Lawn Care Co. We own the means of production. The labor is ours. The biz is ours. We’re not paying a cut to Lawn Doctor or Weed Man for a franchise, or clocking into someone else’s landscaping company. It’s our biz, and there are hundreds of thousands of people who do that.

Suppose I have a camera and some image editing software. I advertise my services as a photographer, and do baby shoots, and wedding shoots, and senior photos, and baseball cards for the local Little League teams. So that’s my biz-- I’m working for myself, not clocking in at the JCPenney’s studio or Olan Mills. I’ve got the means of production. I own the materials necessary to run my biz. And I run my biz, just like tens of thousands of other people.

The whole point about distributism is that the means of production is owned by the labor who’s working it, not “everything” being held in common by “everyone” so that no one actually owns anything, except our generous overlords who parcel out what they tell us is our share. 😉 But sometimes, the means of production is too expensive for one person— like, say, an automobile plant. Or a textile mill. Or whatever. And so a group of people team up their resources to go into business together, so that you end up with, say, the Baltimore Automobile Manufacturing Co., rather than it being the Philipl Automobile Co.
 
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Blessings,
I’m not sure I understand Distributivism. I notinclined to think Republicans are for it??It suggests distributing… wealth?? Or opportunities.Now, providing opportunities for work, is our Republican philosophy. In that case, be a Republican. Third parties are bogus. All they do is take votes from the other candidates. We wouldn’t be happy w any outcome. Whoever won would be happy.
In Christ’s Love
Tweedlealice
 
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