Is Distributism utopian?

[meme1961]

For the sake of simplicity, let’s say you have a community with a grocery store, a fabric shop, a shoe store, etc.

Walmart comes in with a grocery section, a fabric section, a shoe section, etc

The other stores end up closing down, and all the community is left with is WalMart.

The size of the community grows, because now Walmart is part of it, and Walmart is a very big community.

Before Walmart arrived, that grocery store sold many, many items that were not produced locally (bananas, coffee, orange juice, etc.). When the grocery store sold those items, was that bad, since the profits on the sale of those items left the community? If this is a farming community, some of the ingredients in the food sold may have been produced locally, but they were shipped out to be aggregated, resold, processed, packaged, then shipped back.

Was this trading with other locales a bad thing? Can you see how that trade made those in distant locales part of the community?

And now that Walmart is selling those items, has something bad happened solely by the fact that it is now Walmart doing the selling?

If the grocery store were an instance of a large corporation, such as a King Soopers or a Safeway, you had a large corporation in your town before, now you still have a large corporation in your town.

What has to change in this scenario is that those people who once worked for Safeway now work for Walmart, and the guy who used to manage the Safeway now manages the grocery department at Walmart.

As time passes, people change professions or start new businesses, or new workers arrive to start other businesses, some of which exist to trade with or supply Walmart, just as before people traded with or supplied the King Soopers (directly, or indirectly through other members of your extended community). Others to do things that Walmart does not do, by starting new businesses, or going to work for businesses that open up shop here because there is a ready labor supply.

It is a mistake to treat change as automatically bad. The heart of the capitalist system is creative destruction brought about by changes in the competitive environment. To prevent that change is a bad thing, in part because in the long term it simply makes the situation worse, and in part because the only way to prevent that change is to give away your personal liberties and rights to an entity big enough and powerful enough to temporarily and partially prevent said change until the power of that change can overwhelm even the most powerful temporal entity.

 

[meme1961]

Socialism means that the government owns the means of production. Distributism finds that repugnant.

Your education is a bit stale. Political science now recognizes other forms of socialism, including regulatory socialism. The difference is that under regulatory socialism, you still “own” your means of production, but you don’t control it. The socialist state controls it by means of regulatory or legislative power (in short, you own it but the state controls it).

What distributism means is that society is structured in such a way that persons can own, and earn thorough their own work, the funds necessary to build their own means of support.

If that is all it means, then Distributism is a word with no discriminatory meaning, because that exists right now.

It has nothing to do with siezure of property. It supports the local shoe store rather than the big box store.

Whoops! There is where you have to stop and explain HOW Distributism “supports the local shoe store” rather than the “big box store”. Without the application of some kind of regulatory or legislative power, what would be different under Distributism than what we currently have?

Answer: license. See my other posts about this.

In 1910 when some guy wanted to be a blacksmith the government did not sieze somebody else’s anvil so that the guy could set up shop. So why do you guys think that it did? It didn’t, pure and simple. Take that argument off the table it’s ludicrous.

Excuse? You just argued against Distributism, not for it. That is what we have NOW, the right to set up shop and grow as big as the market allows you to do so.

Whare are you guys coming from?

A little place I like to call “reality.”

If Distributism does not already exist, it must be brought into existence by one of two methods: 1) People are taught what it means, and then adopt the tennets on their own absent coercion 2) A sufficiently powerful entity is created to enforce it.

If number 1, then what will you do with Walmart? Just preach against it, but nothing else? If so, then what will you do when people continue to prefer to shop at Walmart?

If number 2, then can you see how people would consider Distributism to be fundamentally evil, since it would further violate their personal rights and liberties?

Have you any sense that money can be saved, and with that accumulation, small business can be started and then those supported by government hands off?

You mean, just like today, absent a decade or two of government overreach?

Where do you get this siezure mentality? I’ll say it again, I think a lot of posters here don’t know what the concept is.

I think I do. Either you have a word that is a synonym for the free market, and thus this discussion is moot, or you are not discussing policy for some reason or another.

 

[meme1961]

I guess I was not entirely clear about the fact that those were my own ideas rather than those of distributism, I’m sorry about that.

But I want to make it really clear because I have no idea where distributists stand on this and do not want any criticism of my own personal ideas to fall on distributism because that would be really bad.

So, again, this is as far as I know not a fatal flaw of distributism, since those are my own personal ideas.

So now we are back to not knowing what Distributism is. But according to the Wikipedia page, and several other papers I’ve read, Distributism is a new spin on the old idea of Feudalism, specifically that part of Feudalism that includes the idea that all property, goods and services, whether or not the state actually owns it, lies under the the power and jurisdiction of said state, and that in order to do business, one must get a license from that state.

Distributists, at least some of them, advocate worker-owned cooperatives for large-scale operations. Mondragon in Spain is an example of this.

Such businesses already exist here in the United States, too. So again, I’m left to consider Distributism as a label with no meaning.

Most of the large corporations are “stock” companies, and thus are basically owned by both the workers (when I worked for a fortune 50 company, I bought a lot of the companies stock, and thus became a part owner in the company), and people who may or may not be a customer of the company. If your point is that “worker owned” is what Distributism is about, then we have a different conversation, though I would start by asking about its relationship to communism.

Additionally, a cooperative of separately owned companies could provide the same benefits of a large corporation.

That is how large corporations are structured: as an aggregate of smaller groups (sometimes referred to as “divisions”).

Most of the fortune 50 are like big bags of smaller companies. That is why they report earnings both by market segment, AND “division”. A large corporation is almost always a “collective”, but with a legal umbrella of also being recognized as being part of a corporation. The advantage of being under that one umbrella is that of cooperative effort that can’t be created or sustained across separate companies. This can have deleterious effects as well, of course.

The break-up of AT&T was accomplished by selling the many divisions of the company. It was not accomplished by selling the office equipment.

And instead of having single, state-sponsored mega-corporation, you have a small number of very large ones. Is this an advertisement for Distributism? If so, then “large” really applies to about 50 to 100 corporations in the US.

Apparently, the parts of computers are not manufactured by the named manufacturers but by other companies. So it really wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

Your information is not complete. There are really only two manufacturers of CPUs in the US: AMD and Intel. Most of the core chips are also manufactured by Intel, or a small number of other large companies (such as the ICH5 and ICH7 series). The remainder of the chips are much smaller, much less complex, but even so are still manufactured by “large” corporations. The point I was trying to make is that there is a certain minimum size for corporations that are producing very capital intensive goods, such as chip manufacturing or large diagnostic medical devices.

But more importantly, such fragmentation is something that only occurs after market maturation. It works poorly, if at all, to produce new markets or revolutionary goods for existing markets. Such market fragmentation requires the existence of fairly long term, stable “standards”, such as now exist in the telephony and computer industries today.

And now Ford parts are manufactured by lots of different companies all over the world.

See above.

Those companies you refer to have large capital requirements, and thus do constitute a “large” company. That said, you might want to do some research into why those companies are off shore, and very specifically why some of them are “separate” companies.

I remember travelling through Elizabeth NJ in the 60s and 70s. There was a lot of pollution spewing from those big factories.

I did say “modern”, did I not?

Also, manufacturing has always and will always produce more effluent of all kinds than office work. The difference is that now, a large company can afford to conform to EPA regulation, while smaller ones have to move offshore to jurisdictions that have laxer ecological regulatory environments.

 

[meme1961]

I have a question for you. Does having regulation on the market require a bureaucracy?

In this context? Yes. The concept of “self-regulating”, while valid and important, does not apply to this conversation, unless by Distributism, you are referring to a purely voluntary choice.

It seems to me we could have a nearly non-existent state under distributism, probably much closer than the libertarians will ever get without it. Laws don’t require a whole government apparatus to manage. Let the market handle it. The party that is wronged can pursue any violation in the courts.

Oops. The “courts”? An arm of government, that requires a policing authority, that judges the applicability of the work of the legislative part of the government, and if applicable, applies it? Said application requiring a penalty system, ranging from prisons to authorities to levy and collect fines?

The straw man argument that is thrown at capitalists in regards to their desire to eliminate government is just that: a straw man. A free market requires a government in order to keep the playing field fair and just. Modern economics rarely, if ever talks about economic systems absent their political context, and often times uses the term “political economy” to indicate such.

The question always arises as to how much government, and how much power to grant it, and most importantly “What is fair?” (As Catholics, we can answer the “what is fair?” question by pointing out that, in large part, Western Civilization is a construct of Holy Mother Church), but it is never reasonable to talk about an economic system absent a governing authority.

Even in the so-called “pure capitalist state”, government emerges, though it is of course so closely allied to the business entities that are created as to be somewhat difficult to spot.

I am going to vote for Ron Paul because I think we are at the point where groups of capitalists are seeking more protection from the government and we need to roll back some of that corporate welfare. Anyway, he makes this argument regarding child protection laws, letting the market handle it. I just have to ask where one draws the line? Why is it alright to enforce child protection laws in the market, but not to ensure cartels and monopolies don’t have a chance to form?

Well, we already have anti-monopoly statues, so I don’t see Ron Paul as fixing that. I agree that the notion of a fair playing field obviates the concept of “too big to fail”, or of a company getting preferential treatment to attract them to a given location, so I’m right there with you on that part of it.

But Ron Paul has very little chance of getting elected. Too much baggage, and too many off-the-wall crazy ideas to overcome.

 

[meme1961]

The state has the right through laws. If someone runs someone else deliberately over with his car, it is an abuse of property.
If some chem factory runs on lousy sadeft standards and explodes killing thousands of people, it is abuse of property.

Ah! I get it, you meant “the violation of the rights of another person with the support of property”. I thought you were referring to what I do ON or WITH my property, such as deciding to drain a swap in order to create more usable farm land.

Yes, the state has the right to impose a certain level of inter-personal restrictions (don’t murder each other being one of those impositions). I would agree with that.

Obviously removing corporate personhood and leaving nothing to sue against, is a bad idea. But corporate personhood is an artificial construct, as only humans have rights and the corporate personhood is an attempt to “combine” the actual rights of the owners so that they can be used into relation of their property. As it is artificial one could change it without unavoidable harm to the property rights of its owners. And the lack of clear ownership could provide sufficient reason to change something.

I’m always game to hear a proposition. What would you propose to replace the concept of “corporate personhood”?

My warning was to point out that a huge amount of jurisprudence is based on this concept, and that incautiously ripping it up might be worse than the problem you are trying to fix (though at this point, I’m still not certain what problem you perceive, nor why it needs to be fixed).

Consider, as a starting point, the concept of a suit at law. How does that apply to a corporation if that corporation is not a person? And what happens to the legal precedents and relationships that currently apply precisely because a corporation is a “person”?

 

[meme1961]

This is about as bad as elucidations of Catholic teachings written by anti-Catholic former Catholics.

You do realize that the strawman argument is a fallacy?

I’m happy to read any reasoning or argument that you might have to the contrary. You posted none, so my only recourse is to interpret what you did post as unsupported assertion.

Why, for example, do you say: “You do realize that the strawman argument is a fallacy?”

What fallacy? How so?

 

[meme1961]

Thank you very much for explaining why one should be against a free market system unbounded by any interference whatsoever.

Did I ever argue anything else?

 

[meme1961]

I have a lot of trouble with that because that causes a diffusion of moral responsibility coupled with the protection of corporate personhood which allows them to benefit when the managers make good decisions and not suffer when the management makes bad decisions.

When managers make bad decisions, the stock holders do indeed suffer. The value of their stock goes down, and if that stock normally paid dividends, the dividend per share goes down, possibly to zero.

Moreover, the separation of ownership and decision-making renders the focus of the entire enterprise to be in short-term profits, further withering what morality there may have been along with rendering long term planning less important than it should be.

No, it doesn’t. (See, I can make bald assertions too!)

 

[frankpearson]

Did I ever argue anything else?

Ahh, then you are at least part distributist. You just don’t know it.

 

[frankpearson]

In this context? Yes. The concept of “self-regulating”, while valid and important, does not apply to this conversation, unless by Distributism, you are referring to a purely voluntary choice.

Oops. The “courts”? An arm of government, that requires a policing authority, that judges the applicability of the work of the legislative part of the government, and if applicable, applies it? Said application requiring a penalty system, ranging from prisons to authorities to levy and collect fines?

The straw man argument that is thrown at capitalists in regards to their desire to eliminate government is just that: a straw man. A free market requires a government in order to keep the playing field fair and just. Modern economics rarely, if ever talks about economic systems absent their political context, and often times uses the term “political economy” to indicate such.

The question always arises as to how much government, and how much power to grant it, and most importantly “What is fair?” (As Catholics, we can answer the “what is fair?” question by pointing out that, in large part, Western Civilization is a construct of Holy Mother Church), but it is never reasonable to talk about an economic system absent a governing authority.

Even in the so-called “pure capitalist state”, government emerges, though it is of course so closely allied to the business entities that are created as to be somewhat difficult to spot.

Well, we already have anti-monopoly statues, so I don’t see Ron Paul as fixing that. I agree that the notion of a fair playing field obviates the concept of “too big to fail”, or of a company getting preferential treatment to attract them to a given location, so I’m right there with you on that part of it.

But Ron Paul has very little chance of getting elected. Too much baggage, and too many off-the-wall crazy ideas to overcome.

I think you are tending toward distributism. The division, in the abstract between the three systems is very clear to a distributist-

Capitalism (libertarian) - capital and land are owned by the free market, concentrated or not concentrated however that distribution of capital and land fall

Socialism - capital and land are controlled by the state

Distributism - capital and land are owned by the free market, concentrated according to the concentration of laborers.

The recognition of a need to regulate a pure laissez faire system relating to the distribution of property is a recognition, at least partially of the abstract idea of the economic philosophy of distributism.

I think differentiating ourselves from laissez faire capitalists who want to paint every business and every success in a free market as a “capitalist” success. Recognize that it is not the strong form capitalist that is successful in regard to both labor and capital, it is distributism, or to use Christopher Ferrara’s definition, “Capitalism in the benign sense”.

 

[meme1961]

Ahh, then you are at least part distributist. You just don’t know it.

No, not really. I’m a limited government, free market capitalist.

When ever somebody tries to nail the Distributists on the meaning of the term, and how it will be implemented, they go all vague, or retreat.

Until such time as someone can actually define it, Distributism is a null (meaningless) term.

 

[St_Francis]

So now we are back to not knowing what Distributism is. But according to the Wikipedia page, and several other papers I’ve read, Distributism is a new spin on the old idea of Feudalism, specifically that part of Feudalism that includes the idea that all property, goods and services, whether or not the state actually owns it, lies under the the power and jurisdiction of said state, and that in order to do business, one must get a license from that state.

I just re-read the Wikipedia article and could not find the part which said either of those things.

Perhaps you could let us know which paragraphs of which sections include these two bits of information, 1. the distributism holds that the state holds that power over everything and 2. that one has to get a license in order to do business.

Knowing that Wikipdia is subject to change, maybe you could point us to the papers you read in which that information was included.

 

[frankpearson]

No, not really. I’m a limited government, free market capitalist.

When ever somebody tries to nail the Distributists on the meaning of the term, and how it will be implemented, they go all vague, or retreat.

Until such time as someone can actually define it, Distributism is a null (meaningless) term.

Many like the concept behind distributism, and they have an understanding, but don’t know a concise definition because not enough people give concise definitions. It is a failure on the part of popular distributists.

But as laid out by Belloc in Servile State, distributism is the following:

Distributism - capital and land are owned by the free market, concentrated according to the concentration of labor in the market.

That’s what it is. It isn’t vague. It is a quite solid definition Sure it is an abstract definition, but so is “capitalism” and “socialism”, they all actually occur in the real world in a modified form.

I posted about implementation a few pages back. But one thing you should know, unlike capitalism and socialism, no distributist proposes violent revolution.

1. start and support distributist businesses
2. work for distributist legislation in the existing system
3. spread the message.

 

[St_Francis]

I’m happy to read any reasoning or argument that you might have to the contrary. You posted none, so my only recourse is to interpret what you did post as unsupported assertion.

Why, for example, do you say: “You do realize that the strawman argument is a fallacy?”

What fallacy? How so?

The strawman argument *is *the fallacy. It means re-wording the opponent’s argument wrongly and then refuting the erroneous argument.

So I am saying that your description of distributism is wrong, and that the arguments you bring up against your erroneous description of distributism do not refute our arguments for distributism because your arguments are not directed against what we are arguing for but against something else altogether.

 

[St_Francis]

No, not really. I’m a limited government, free market capitalist.

When ever somebody tries to nail the Distributists on the meaning of the term, and how it will be implemented, they go all vague, or retreat.

Until such time as someone can actually define it, Distributism is a null (meaningless) term.

OK, what precisely is free market limited government and how do you propose to implement it?

 

[meme1961]

I think you are tending toward distributism. The division, in the abstract between the three systems is very clear to a distributist-

Capitalism (libertarian) - capital and land are owned by the free market, concentrated or not concentrated however that distribution of capital and land fall

Socialism - capital and land are controlled by the state

Distributism - capital and land are owned by the free market, concentrated according to the concentration of laborers.

The recognition of a need to regulate a pure laissez faire system relating to the distribution of property is a recognition, at least partially of the abstract idea of the economic philosophy of distributism.

I would disagree with your definition of Capitalism (capital property is owned not by the market, but by its owners), while I would define Distributism (as you describe it here) as a kind of socialism, if by “free market”, you mean the “people”, as a political power.

Business does go where the labor is, of course, but this is an aspect of capitalism.

I never agreed that the distribution of property needs to be regulated or controlled by government. Indeed, “regulating” the distribution of property/capital is not a form of capitalism, it is an aspect of a form of Feudalism.

Where capitalism acknowledges the need for government, it is in the enforcement of contracts, the regulation of anti-competitive activities, and in the elimination of direct and immediate group threat (the waging of war) or in the support of group benefit (the construction of roads). From a capitalist perspective, certain types of war are a direct threat to the free market, thus must be fought collectively.

If the Distributists in this conversation agree with your definition, then Distributism is either a form of socialism lite (where the state usurps some level of ownership and/or control over property), or it is a re-emergence of form of Feudalism (where the state grants you license to acquire a given amount of property, or to use your property in a given way).

If you believe that Capitalism includes the concept of an over-arching authority that decides who gets what property, and how much of it, then I would flatly disagree with your definition of Capitalism, as it violates the fundamental concept of a free market.

In a free market, it is the people, through their economic activity, their economic choices, that decide who “gets” to own property, and how much of it. By definition, Walmart is and example of the free market, because it was the people who decided that Walmart should succeed, and they signified their support by trading with Walmart.

To reduce Walmart in size, or break it up by fiat, would be a direct and immediate violation of the people’s right to choose. If, however, you can convince a large enough group of people to return to purchasing goods and services from the Mom and Pop stores, but they remain free to choose as they will, then you are a Capitalist with a non-economic agenda.

 

[meme1961]

I just re-read the Wikipedia article and could not find the part which said either of those things.

And some of Church teaching is not explicitly present in the Bible, either. They are the logical result of what is explicitly present. The Distributist cause is so vague as to be something that can be approached only by inference. My attempt to infer is not a straw man argument, because to be a straw man argument, you must have presented a point of view for me to restate, and at present the Distributists have not.

Perhaps you could let us know which paragraphs of which sections include these two bits of information, 1. the distributism holds that the state holds that power over everything

No state ever holds power over everything. But if you have a philosophy that incorporates the concept of “too big”, then you must have an authoritative way of measuring that, and then imposing sanctions on “too big.” If this authority is the market, and the sanctions imposed are by free people making free choices, then you have a label with no meaning, as “Distributism” is simply Capitalism plus a non-economic agenda that you intend to advance by preaching. If that is the case, no new label is necessary, and indeed, a new label will simply confuse the issue.

1. that one has to get a license in order to do business.

Just like Obamacare, there will have to be exceptions to the “too big” rule. If a particular business must be “too big” in order to function, the authority will have to recognize that and grant license to that company to continue to exist as constituted.

Knowing that Wikipdia is subject to change, maybe you could point us to the papers you read in which that information was included.

Physical papers, in a stack on the floor besides my filing cabinet. If you are prepared to actually define the term Distributism (these papers aren’t much good, either), and describe the policies that Distributists agree must be implemented in order to bring about Distributism, I’d be happy to peruse them.

But I will not apologize for trying to understand such a vague and undefined idea by the process of “reading it back to you”. The fault lies with the proponents of Distributism for their failure to communicate, not in the audience for trying to understand.

 

[meme1961]

Many like the concept behind distributism, and they have an understanding, but don’t know a concise definition because not enough people give concise definitions. It is a failure on the part of popular distributists.

But as laid out by Belloc in Servile State, distributism is the following:

Distributism - capital and land are owned by the free market, concentrated according to the concentration of labor in the market.

That, however, is socialism. The “free market” is a collective, and thus your concepts are directly in line with socialism.

If by “free market”, you meant “private ownership”, then say so. By the way, in capitalism, businesses will already migrate towards concentrations of cheap labor.

If you meant something else, then please define your term(s). What do you mean by “owned by the free market”?

 

[meme1961]

The strawman argument *is *the fallacy. It means re-wording the opponent’s argument wrongly and then refuting the erroneous argument.

I was confused by your reply, and probably still am. Are you claiming that my posting was a straw man argument? If so, I would disagree. What I was involved in was “reading back” your argument in order to motivate you to clarify your terms. I’m happy to read back something different, if you will give me something that explains your position.

So I am saying that your description of distributism is wrong, and that the arguments you bring up against your erroneous description of distributism do not refute our arguments for distributism because your arguments are not directed against what we are arguing for but against something else altogether.

If the proponents of Distributism refuse to define it, I have as much right as anybody else to do so.

Make a cogent argument that includes the definition of your terms, and I’d be happy to address that argument.

 

[frankpearson]

I would disagree with your definition of Capitalism (capital property is owned not by the market, but by its owners), while I would define Distributism (as you describe it here) as a kind of socialism, if by “free market”, you mean the “people”, as a political power.

Business does go where the labor is, of course, but this is an aspect of capitalism.

I never agreed that the distribution of property needs to be regulated or controlled by government. Indeed, “regulating” the distribution of property/capital is not a form of capitalism, it is an aspect of a form of Feudalism.

Where capitalism acknowledges the need for government, it is in the enforcement of contracts, the regulation of anti-competitive activities, and in the elimination of direct and immediate group threat (the waging of war) or in the support of group benefit (the construction of roads). From a capitalist perspective, certain types of war are a direct threat to the free market, thus must be fought collectively.

If the Distributists in this conversation agree with your definition, then Distributism is either a form of socialism lite (where the state usurps some level of ownership and/or control over property), or it is a re-emergence of form of Feudalism (where the state grants you license to acquire a given amount of property, or to use your property in a given way).

If you believe that Capitalism includes the concept of an over-arching authority that decides who gets what property, and how much of it, then I would flatly disagree with your definition of Capitalism, as it violates the fundamental concept of a free market.

In a free market, it is the people, through their economic activity, their economic choices, that decide who “gets” to own property, and how much of it. By definition, Walmart is and example of the free market, because it was the people who decided that Walmart should succeed, and they signified their support by trading with Walmart.

To reduce Walmart in size, or break it up by fiat, would be a direct and immediate violation of the people’s right to choose. If, however, you can convince a large enough group of people to return to purchasing goods and services from the Mom and Pop stores, but they remain free to choose as they will, then you are a Capitalist with a non-economic agenda.

I do not want to get into any discussion that ends up compromising the intellectual integrity of our discussion, so I am very hesitant to even say this, but you are raising a straw man. You must remember that I had stated that there would be no land-oversight bureaucracy. There would be no “capital and land” (not property) hand-outs or confiscations. implicit in a system that is not revolutionary is that you start from a point where the land is not yet owned or is transferring hands but is not being confiscated (see my ideas for implementation). From the inception, labor in regard to capital and land would accompany ownership. Economic rents would be made disadvantageous or disallowed.

On the issue of socialism-lite. These are terms that hold an immense amount of emotion and less meaning than they should. Socialism in practice is a belief in the empowerment and the increased propertied reach of the state. I will repeat that distributists do not believe in the creation and/or investment of ownership in government bureaucracy.

I think it is good for everyone involved to get away from the muddy definitions of capitalism and socialism and make their definitions succinct. I accept your correction to my definition of capitalism, and that was what I was getting at anyway. Socialism is about the investment of land and capital in the state. Diffusion of property in the free market is a different thing. Distributists call this distributism.

I would argue, and you may or may not agree, I think you will since your more recent comments are sounding more and more like a neo-classical, but I think centralized crony capitalism in megacorporations is moving closer and closer to what you might call “socialist-lite”. This is what many distributists are trying to address.

Thanks for the intellectual and thorough discussion thus far.