Is Distributism utopian?

[Monte_RCMS]

Right. The area can support only one grocery store, not two. The owner has the choice of going high-end and making more profit, or staying where he is and have affordable food for those who do not have as much.

What I want to know from you is *would it be **wrong ***in your system, whatever it is that you call it? (And what do you call the system you all are advocating?)

Why does “the system you all are advocating” even have to have a name?

Sorry, just not a good example.

Every area can support more than one “grocery store”.

A grocery store need not be large.

It could simply be a road-side stand. They exist everywhere. Some even have an honor system to cut expenses, so they don’t need a clerk to take the money. The customers make change among themselves.

And there is nothing to prevent someone from opening a small store or a small shop. Or a co-op. Even churches set up “stores” … food pantries. Just to serve their small communities. Although I am a Catholic, I have bought food from a coop set up by a LDS / Mormon community run out of someone’s home. And I have also bought food from an Amish/Mennonite store.

Doesn’t need to be anything elaborate.

It’s not an issue of a Whole Foods versus a Walmart.

If there is a market, whether it is upscale or “downscale”, there are many ways for that market to be served.

There are dollar stores. All kinds of alternatives.

Someone will figure out a way to serve a market.

There is no need to create a false set of alternatives.

If you are not happy with the “shopping alternatives” that are available to you, then you and your neighbors can set up your own coop. People do that all the time. People start by shopping for their neighbors and expand it from there. Churches are natural mechanisms for setting up community services like that.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

I am not and have not said that it is immoral to make a profit. What I am asking is if it is all right to *decline *to make a profit in one area or another.

For example, there is a rural area with quite rich people and quite poor people and man who owns the one grocery store for 60 miles around. He could make his store a high-end grocery store and make a greater profit selling just to the rich, but then the poor people would be unable to afford to shop there.

Would it be “all right” for him to decline the greater profit in favor of continuing to serve *all *the people in the area? That’s what I want to find out: if under your view (which I am still unsure what to call), it is all right to *not *maximize profit in favor of other considerations.

(Posit that the business, being paid for, can maintain itself in one of the two ways but that to build a new business would not work because one would have to start from the ground up.)

If you want to “decline” to make a profit, that’s perfectly fine. Or to operate a low margin business.

The question is: if you decline a profit, can you stay in business?

On the other hand, there ARE stores that focus on selling products with a low margin.

Look at your local dollar store.

They are often side by side with more upscale stores.

As another poster mentioned: a road-side stand.

Or a mom & pop.

There is room for a wide variety of store models.

But without profits they will go out of business.

 

[St_Francis]

If you want to “decline” to make a profit, that’s perfectly fine. Or to operate a low margin business.

The question is: if you decline a profit, can you stay in business?

As I have repeated, it was more towards declining to “focus on maximizing profit” rather than trying to operate with no profit whatsoever. The question arose from a comment another poster made, and I just wanted to be clear as to exactly what you all thought.

 

[Monte_RCMS]

As I have repeated, it was more towards declining to “focus on maximizing profit” rather than trying to operate with no profit whatsoever. The question arose from a comment another poster made, and I just wanted to be clear as to exactly what you all thought.

I apologize for sounding obtuse, but I don’t know how you do that … “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’”. I mean … I have worked in the business world for half-a-century and in all that time, I have NEVER heard anyone use that kind of language … it just doesn’t “compute” in the business world.

Business people just don’t talk that way.

You don’t know what your actual profit actually is … until you close the books on the year.

Maybe some people work in a high margin luxury market … Hermes bags or Vuitton cases … or something like that, but they don’t service “downscale” markets anyway.

A car company may have a mix of economy models and luxury high priced models … but it seems as if most car companies are getting hammered, profit-wise, regardless of their pricing strategy.

Being in the airline industry is virtually suicidal, from a profit standpoint.

You could be in the oil-field equipment services industry … but they are hotly competitive. And one year everything is great and the next year, maybe not so great … but they don’t serve “downscale” markets.

Maybe the chicken business … like Purdue or one of those … but they don’t single out one group of purchasers at the expense of another.

So, I just cannot for the life of me visualize how the discussion of “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’” … even remotely relates to the real world.

Maybe it is language that crops up in “academia” … maybe at the university business office, they talk like that … you know … the way that colleges and universities price their tuition and fees … but I have never heard it expressed anywhere in the real world of my experience.

I mean … can you come up with a real life example?

 

[St_Francis]

I apologize for sounding obtuse, but I don’t know how you do that … “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’”. I mean … I have worked in the business world for half-a-century and in all that time, I have NEVER heard anyone use that kind of language … it just doesn’t “compute” in the business world.

Business people just don’t talk that way.

You don’t know what your actual profit actually is … until you close the books on the year.

Maybe some people work in a high margin luxury market … Hermes bags or Vuitton cases … or something like that, but they don’t service “downscale” markets anyway.

A car company may have a mix of economy models and luxury high priced models … but it seems as if most car companies are getting hammered, profit-wise, regardless of their pricing strategy.

Being in the airline industry is virtually suicidal, from a profit standpoint.

You could be in the oil-field equipment services industry … but they are hotly competitive. And one year everything is great and the next year, maybe not so great … but they don’t serve “downscale” markets.

Maybe the chicken business … like Purdue or one of those … but they don’t single out one group of purchasers at the expense of another.

So, I just cannot for the life of me visualize how the discussion of “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’” … even remotely relates to the real world.

Maybe it is language that crops up in “academia” … maybe at the university business office, they talk like that … you know … the way that colleges and universities price their tuition and fees … but I have never heard it expressed anywhere in the real world of my experience.

I mean … can you come up with a real life example?

David and I had an exchange of posts about “focusing on maximizing profits,” as he put it, earlier in this thread. He seemed extremely intent on it, so you’ll have to ask him. I gave him a few made-up examples of what I was thinking, but the examples were based on things that I have seen happen, usually in small communities in which I have lived.

 

[David_Castlen]

I apologize for sounding obtuse, but I don’t know how you do that … “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’”. I mean … I have worked in the business world for half-a-century and in all that time, I have NEVER heard anyone use that kind of language … it just doesn’t “compute” in the business world.

Business people just don’t talk that way.

Yeh Can you just image at the weekly sales meeting you have a big deal and it comes you time to report to the group. And the boss goes bonkers because you sold too much. I can hear him now, "You maximizing #@!$@@$%%%$##!!! how dare you. One more time and you are out of here!!! Everybody its out to Joes Restaurant * for the weekly dinner but not you Castlen you ~!$@#@#$%%# maximizer*

 

[frankpearson]

Incorrect. The mirage is that the Popes are condemning free enterprise…

Please… This form of argumentation is dishonest. Nobody is condemning “free enterprise”.

This is a classic straw man, and it is a weak form of argumentation. What you were willing to defend is “Laissez Faire” capitalism, which is condemned again and again by the Church.

 

[frankpearson]

Monte RCMS;8689311:

I apologize for sounding obtuse, but I don’t know how you do that … “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’”. I mean … I have worked in the business world for half-a-century and in all that time, I have NEVER heard anyone use that kind of language … it just doesn’t “compute” in the business world.

Business people just don’t talk that way.

Yeh Can you just image at the weekly sales meeting you have a big deal and it comes you time to report to the group. And the boss goes bonkers because you sold too much. I can hear him now, "You maximizing #@!$@@$%%%$##!!! how dare you. One more time and you are out of here!!! Everybody its out to Joes Restaurant * for the weekly dinner but not you Castlen you ~!$@#@#$%%# maximizer*

No doubt.

Some people focus on maximizing profits on the sale of organs harvested from executed political and religious prisoners in China or aborted human fetuses for experimentation. The lack of regulations on the market ensures that the harvesters get only smiles and pats on the back from their bosses. Hey,if the days work turned out to be a little more, let’s just say, “trying” than usual, the employee may even get to go out for a Pepsi with the boss.

 

[St_Francis]

Monte RCMS;8689311:

I apologize for sounding obtuse, but I don’t know how you do that … “declining to ‘focus on maximizing profit’”. I mean … I have worked in the business world for half-a-century and in all that time, I have NEVER heard anyone use that kind of language … it just doesn’t “compute” in the business world.

Business people just don’t talk that way.

Yeh Can you just image at the weekly sales meeting you have a big deal and it comes you time to report to the group. And the boss goes bonkers because you sold too much. I can hear him now, "You maximizing #@!$@@$%%%$##!!! how dare you. One more time and you are out of here!!! Everybody its out to Joes Restaurant * for the weekly dinner but not you Castlen you ~!$@#@#$%%# maximizer*

But of course that wasn’t what I was saying, was it?

 

[Abu]

The knowledge of free enterprise is absymal, and the distortions against free enterprise legion.

frankpearson #485
Nobody is condemning “free enterprise”. What you were willing to defend is “Laissez Faire” capitalism, which is condemned again and again by the Church.

“Where is the reference to and quote for ‘laissez-faire capitalism’ by Fr Sirico or by the Popes” as stated by St Francis in #428? He states that it has not existed since the 18th century.
This has never existed in any society or country, only in the minds of a few economists.
A strawman, still quite unable to provide any references.

St Francis #428
The sort of laissez-sfaire capitalism promoted by Fr Sirocco, et al, does not currently exist, and has not existed since the Industrial Revolution. Oddly enough, what existed back them looked a lot more like Distributism than does what laissez-faire capitalism has brought us to.

Thus the poster feels that “laissez-faire capitalism promoted by Fr Sirico et al does not currently exist, and has not existed since the Industrial Revolution”
Yet he feels that what has never existed since the 18th century, is “what laissez-faire capitalism has brought us to.”
Confusion worse confounded.

St Francis #423
the fact of the matter is that without government intervention most of the capitalistic growth could not have taken place

False.
As Dr Woods et al show, it is precisely government (political) finagling over the last 80 years that has resulted in failed stimuli, with the Federal Reserve’s mismanagement of the nation’s money and banking systems, housing mortgages and deficits.
[See *Meltdown, Thomas E Woods, Jr., Regnery, 2009].

When the government let free enterprise work as in the U.S. depression of 1920-21, recovery was not long delayed.

 

[David_Castlen]

David Castlen;8690583:

No doubt.

Some people focus on maximizing profits on the sale of organs harvested from executed political and religious

prisoners in China or aborted human fetuses for experimentation. The lack of regulations on the market ensures that the harvesters get only smiles and pats on the back from their bosses. Hey,if the days work turned out to be a little more, let’s just say, “trying” than usual, the employee may even get to go out for a Pepsi with the boss.

**Yeh, I know what you mean. I sure miss those days of selling organs, I was one of the better liver salesman; have a plaque on the wall of my record liver sells. I remember ole Fred Haberstien, my partner. We used to go on a lot of calls together. He was an old timer when I got there. He taught me a lot. There was a prospect we called on once. Ty One-on was his name. We walked away with a liver, two eyes, a left hand, six feet of intestines, and half a brain untied from behind his head. We got those organs to Bethesda hospital within an hour. They had them all replanted within three hours. One of the organs - the intestines - were put in a wealthy person’s poodle - a pretty little white thing. You might say we had 'em all sowed up. **

 

[St_Francis]

The knowledge of free enterprise is absymal, and the distortions against free enterprise legion.
“Where is the reference to and quote for ‘laissez-faire capitalism’ by Fr Sirico or by the Popes” as stated by St Francis in #428? He states that it has not existed since the 18th century.

I did not mention any quotes by Fr Sirico and I included a quote from an encyclical.

…Oh, is Centesimus Annus the document in which Pope John Paul II expressed that** “increasing internationalization of the economy ought to be accompanied by *effective international agencies ***which will oversee and direct the economy to the common good,…”?

Why do you think these “reasonable laws” are needed?

The sort of laissez-sfaire capitalism promoted by Fr Sirocco, et al, does not currently exist, and has not existed since the Industrial Revolution. Oddly enough, what existed back them looked a lot more like Distributism than does what laissez-faire capitalism has brought us to.

This has never existed in any society or country, only in the minds of a few economists.

What is the “this” you refer to?

A strawman, still quite unable to provide any references.
Thus the poster feels that “laissez-faire capitalism promoted by Fr Sirico et al does not currently exist, and has not existed since the Industrial Revolution”

And I am right. Before the Industrial Revolution, we had laissez-faire capitalism on a small scale, mostly family-owned businesses and farms, which looked a lot like Distributism.

Once the Industrial Revolution started up, we had large-scale capitalism *with government help. *That is *not *laissez-faire, right?

But the involvement of the government at *that *point was at the behest and int he favor of large businesses. *That *is what the laissez-faire situation which existed before, when it came to the Industrial Revolution, brought us to.

Yet he feels that what has never existed since the 18th century, is “what laissez-faire capitalism has brought us to.”
Confusion worse confounded.

False.
As Dr Woods et al show, it is precisely government (political) finagling over the last 80 years that has resulted in failed stimuli, with the Federal Reserve’s mismanagement of the nation’s money and banking systems, housing mortgages and deficits.
[See *Meltdown

, Thomas E Woods, Jr., Regnery, 2009].

When the government let free enterprise work as in the U.S. depression of 1920-21, recovery was not long delayed.
How very clever of Dr Woods to start 80 years ago rather than further back. It would seem that government interference is only “bad” when it is reining businesses in, not when it is to the benefit of big businesses.

 

[frankpearson]

frankpearson;8690980:

**Yeh, I know what you mean. I sure miss those days of selling organs, I was one of the better liver salesman; have a plaque on the wall of my record liver sells. I remember ole Fred Haberstien, my partner. We used to go on a lot of calls together. He was an old timer when I got there. He taught me a lot. There was a prospect we called on once. Ty One-on was his name. We walked away with a liver, two eyes, a left hand, six feet of intestines, and half a brain untied from behind his head. We got those organs to Bethesda hospital within an hour. They had them all replanted within three hours. One of the organs - the intestines - were put in a wealthy person’s poodle - a pretty little white thing. You might say we had 'em all sowed up. **

What is happening in China is very serious. Your mockery of what is happening is really disheartening. This is supposed to be a Catholic forum. I honestly just feel bad reading it.

 

[frankpearson]

The knowledge of free enterprise is absymal, and the distortions against free enterprise legion.

Neither St. Francis nor I oppose a free market. Many of the arguments in favor of the free functioning of the market everybody here acknowledge. It is just not the point. Distributism is a system that at most posits some regulation in the market. So unless you are defending Laissez Faire, then we are simply talking about types of regulation. Taxing people is not stealing from them. Government involvement in the market can be a good thing.

In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy [had to be found in the last part of the 19th century and] be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the [18th century], and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

 

[David_Castlen]

David Castlen;8691820:

What is happening in China is very serious. Your mockery of what is happening is really disheartening. This is supposed to be a Catholic forum. I honestly just feel bad reading it.

You purposely make the free market look like it is a system that encourages people to participate in an enterprises like organ sells. You know better. You know those of us who purport that the free market is the only way to insure that people live better and society be less susceptible to evil would in no way do this. We are Catholics. You have done an excellent job of building a straw man; I am doing my best to burn it down. I hope you feel better; I would suggest Tylenol. It is made by a giant company so the price is low…

 

[David_Castlen]

In any case we clearly see, and on this there is general agreement, that some opportune remedy [had to be found in the last part of the 19th century and] be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class: for the ancient workingmen’s guilds were abolished in the [18th century], and no other protective organization took their place. Public institutions and the laws set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, isolated and helpless, to the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with like injustice, still practiced by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added that the hiring of labor and the conduct of trade are concentrated in the hands of comparatively few; so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.

Any chance you are going to be doing the judgeing when the world comes to an end?

 

[frankpearson]

frankpearson;8694189:

You purposely make the free market look like it is a system that encourages people to participate in an enterprises like organ sells. You know better. You know those of us who purport that the free market is the only way to insure that people live better and society be less susceptible to evil would in no way do this. We are Catholics. You have done an excellent job of building a straw man; I am doing my best to burn it down. I hope you feel better; I would suggest Tylenol. It is made by a giant company so the price is low…

I actually don’t know better. I think these are the kinds of abuses that take place in a market when regulations do not ensure they do not take place. In addition, I think an unregulated market has a tendency to degrade a people’s morals due to the success of the least common denominator. I personally think that if it was more profitable to sell the organs of people who donated them willingly, they would be doing that. Since it is more lucrative, and in China, legal, the market has fallen to the least common denominator.

In other words, an unregulated market (not a free market - I don’t think they are the same thing), does encourage people to participate in enterprises like the sale of organs harvested from unwilling and living members of society. (this goes back to the discussion of simply maximizing profits, just removed from the nice neat box we in capitalist states like to keep it in.)

Of course what I am saying is nothing peculiar to me or to distributists. I could show you, if you like, that it is also the position the Church takes.

 

[Abu]

frankpearson #495,
I think these are the kinds of abuses that take place in a market when regulations do not ensure they do not take place.
In other words, an unregulated market (not a free market - I don’t think they are the same thing), does encourage people to participate in enterprises like the sale of organs harvested from unwilling and living members of society.

The confusion of economics with morality is endless.

Fr James Sadowsky, S.J., professor emeritus of philosophy at Fordham University, expressed it well when he said that ethics is prescriptive while economics is descriptive. “Economics,” he says, “indicates the probable effects of certain policies, while ethics determines what one should do.” These are two very different things. [Dr Thomas E Woods, Jr., *The Church and the Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 31].

Precisely Pope Benedict XVI’s affirmation: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas et Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

As far as the laws of economics exist, the Popes have warned that:
“If I were to pronounce on any single matter of a prevailing economic problem, I should be interfering with the freedom of men to work out their own affairs. Certain cases must be solved in the domain of facts, case by case as they occur…[M]en must realise in deeds those things, the principles of which have been placed beyond dispute…[T]hese things one must leave to the solution of time and experience.” [Pope Leo XIII. Quoted in *The Church And The Market, Dr Thomas E. Woods, Lexington Books, 2005, p 4].

“It goes without saying that part of the responsibility of Pastors is to give careful consideration to current events in order to discern the new requirements of evangelization. However, such an analysis is not meant to pass definitive judgments since this does not fall per se within the Magisterium’s specific domain.” [John Paul II, *Centesimus Annus, 3].

Further, John Paul II adds: “The Church has no models to present; models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one other. For such a task the Church offers Her social teaching as an indispensable and ideal orientation a teaching which, as already mentioned, recognizes the positive value of the market and of enterprise, but which at the same time points out that these need to be oriented towards the common good.….” [CA, 43. Italics in original].

There is a solid basis of economic Catholic thought from the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century the Late Scholastics who were Thomists (followers of St Thomas) “writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social; organization.” They “observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value…” For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them as the first real economists. (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8).

People can, and some do, undermine the common good, and the primary role of government is to support families in solidarity, and the role of the Church in subsidiarity, and that’s why we have laws to seek and punish those who steal, cheat, swindle, against monopolies and other immoral practices. Dr Alejandro Chafuen: Economics “is the study of the formal applications that can be deduced from the fact that human beings act purposefully. It does not consider whether these actions are good or bad (an ethical question). Economic science is value free. It analyses cause and effect relationships that, if true, are scientific….only human acts can be judged morally.” (Christians For Freedom, Ignatius, 1986, p 33).

 

[St_Francis]

You purposely make the free market look like it is a system that encourages people to participate in an enterprises like organ sells. …

You accuse Frank of doing what you do: purposely mischaracterizing distributism as a form of socialism requiring vast amounts of government intervention?

Sheesh…

 

[St_Francis]

…the free market look like it is a system that encourages people to participate in an enterprises like organ sells.

Then what do you say about what is happening in India, where individuals actually do sell their organs? (the ones you can live without some of…)