This has GOT to be sarcasm. Please say it is so.
While I wouldn’t have put it exactly that way, and it is over simplified, the basic idea is sound.
Does anybody really think we need more Bank of America and fewer local independent banks? Are we really better with massive health care bureacracies than we were when doctors had their own practices?
Both the Bank of America and a local bank are corporations, and to insist on one or the other but not both is a false dichotomy. That said, the original poster is correct: some economies of scale can only be realized with large corporations, not small ones.
I would disagree that this requires that large corporations need to be given “more power”, but I would agree that excessive taxation, excessive regulation, excessive governmental control is a bad thing, as it prevents a large corporation from achieving those economies of scale. So instead of “more power”, I would use the phrase, “less taxation and less regulation.”
It would indeed be difficult for a local Joe to produce a competitive car or consumer electronic. But an awful lot of what goes into the economy is NOT improved by the involvement of corporate bureacracy and profit taking. Do you really want to have to call IBM to have your laptop upgraded or Halliburton to have your home plumbing fixed? (shudders).
In point of fact, however, you really do have to work with a large corporation to get your laptop upgraded or your plumbing fixed. That laptop would not exist were it not for some of the largest corporations on earth (Intel and Microsoft), and to be able to upgrade it even an “independent” contractor is in reality only the tip of a very large iceberg, most of which is made up of large corporations.
Please remember that all corporations must take profit, but that a large corporation can take a smaller profit than a smaller company, and reduce overall costs by leveraging economies of scale not available to a mom and pop shop.
As for “corporate bureacracy”, well, that is simply the nature of any corporation, or indeed any group of people, and while a smaller corporation can have less of it, that is only because they also provide less service and/or goods.
But that IS the direction we are going in this country with excessive regulation and bureacratization. Contrary to much populist political rhetoric, these things do NOT spread the wealth, they concentrate it and create an economic environment where only the ‘big boys’ are able to play.
“Spreading the wealth” is not necessarily a moral thing to do, contrary to the moral code of progressive politics. Theft is “spreading the wealth”. Just because the thieves are in the majority, and thus in an overly democratic system, have the power to force the owners of said wealth to “spread it”, does not make that spreading moral. Which is why America was supposed to be Constitutional Republic, not a democracy.
That said, I would agree that only large corporations can afford to pay for the political clout necessary to try to protect themselves from legislation and/or regulation designed to force them to “spread the wealth.” They can also better afford to make full use of an overly complex legal system, where a small corporation may not be able to. Thus as governmental power over the people rises, the emergent property is that corporations have to spend more and more of their profits trying to influence and/or defend themselves against the government.
But if the problem is too much government, then focusing on the size of corporations is entirely beside the point. Our focus should be on reclaiming our liberty, not in learning how to be better and better beggars at the feet of an ever more powerful and bloated government bureacracy.
Distributism, properly implemented is not repackaged socialism. Property and productive assets remain in private hands. The system would just be set up differently so that larger corporations would have to pay MORE in taxes, would grant corporations LESS rights than individuals and other incentives to offset the dehumanizing aspects of corporate capitalism.
With all due respect, you would cure the disease by making it more virulent, and forcing everybody to catch it.
In point of fact, distributism is just repackaged socialism, as you’ve described it here. The difference between the classical form of socialism vs. distributism is a fairly important distinction between “ownership” vs. “real control.” The issue of “ownership” was important when classical socialism was invented, because the associated “real control” was assumed at that time to be an intrinsic and inseparable aspect of ownership. Yet decades of increasingly obtrusive government regulation and interference have demonstrated that “ownership” is irrelevant, and that “control” is what separates a free political economy (a constitutional republic plus a free but mildly regulated market) from socialism (a systematic form of national slavery).
You can “own” something on paper, but if government reserves the power to tell you what to do with that something, how to do it, and when you can do it, that ownership is a mere paper fiction. Control still lies with government, and thus you have socialism.
Where your system fails is in its lack of justice. Why should a large corporation (that already pays more in taxes than a small one) pay even MORE in taxes, just because they are large? This kind of targeted legislation aimed at placing special burdens on a special class is not justice, and down that path lies making special rules for black persons, or females, just because they are black or female. There is a reason that lady justice is usually portrayed as wearing a blind fold.
Out of space, so will stop here.
And how does if differ from socialism?
