No…it IS true. See my response to #3
Will do.
Price controls, that do not reflect supply and demand, whether imposed by government or intermediary, are dangerous and artificial. They lead to economic collapse.
I see no reason why they (price controls established by a local guild of merchants or artisans) wouldn’t consider supply. As for demand, it is immoral to charge more for something because the buyer has a great need for it, if the seller does not experience a great loss by selling it, according to St. Thomas Aquinas.
“3.It (Distributism) fails to account for basic concepts like supply and demand.”
Let’s say that the happy little kingdom of Elbonia (A distributist economy) is home to three coo coo clock makers. They make the best coo coo clocks in the world and sell all they can make. One day a large company in China begins selling electric coo coo clocks at a much lower price. The Elbonian clock makers cannot compete. Their only alternative is to form a company, seek investment (Capitalism), build a factory and out produce the Chinese…or go broke.
Now the king of Elbonia will not allow a corporation to form in his country. Strictly distributist.remember. So the king or the intermediary offers the clock makers three nice little farms. Since the clock makers know nothing about farming they all fail to produce anything and are on the verge of starvation. Sadly, they leave Elbonia and move to the neighboring country of Alagash, where they take jobs with at a large service center that performs warranty repairs cheap Chinese coo coo clocks.
Distributism fails to consider supply and demand as well as specialization.
- They can still form a joint business and if necessary sell full or partial ownership of fixed assets to raise money, that they cannot obtain juridic personality for an entity which serves to make itself wealthy does not impede this.
- The local guild of coo coo clock makers can enforce uniform pricing or can even forbid foreign companies from selling directly to the public.
The goal of distributism is equality.
Hilaire Belloc advocated a “differential tax” in order to progressively move towards a distributist society. (Socialistic)
Belloc goes so far as to say that “the aim of all sound social reform” should be “the wider distribution of property” and that the differential tax is “a tax specially aimed against excessive accumulation.” (Success)
I would point out that a differential tax stifles progress and holds society back. It may cause a more even distribution of property, but the “excessive accumulation” that Belloc wishes to prevent is the motivation of entrepreneurs.
I would prefer limiting the ability of people to conduct business directly with the general public in areas where they do not reside, which would make the concentrated ownership of productive property pointless. But in any case, people can be motivated by reasonable and certain gains as well as by enormous and uncertain gains (Tell me, did medieval Europe suffer recessions every few decades?).
Should not the doctor be rewarded for all his years of training and research work that leads to the discovery of an antibody?
The would-be innovator has two options:
- he can put in a lot of effort and create some new thing that will benefit society, knowing that he will not be allowed to accumulate too much additional wealth as a result of his additional toil, or
- he can continue in the labor that he already does without being an innovator and accumulate roughly the same amount of wealth that he would under the first choice as well.
Human nature being what it is…the would-be innovator will always choose the second option.
On the contrary, distributism allows IP laws (which predate modern capitalism). Moreover, it would allow the doctor to profit from his own work better than capitalism.
In our system, practically any doctor inventing a new antibiotic will be working for some huge corporation, which will possess the patent rights. Whereas in a distributist system, such research would be done by local researchers (who could cooperate with researchers from other localities, as needed) who could retain the patent rights for themselves.
Note that patent rights are basically the right to tax, for a set number of years, the production of some product.
I agree that in medieval times, distributism was successful. That lasted until the Industrial Revolution (and Capitalism) raised the standard of living for all…world wide.
A factory worker living in squalor in the late nineteenth century would probably disagree with that.
