Joe, my apologies. I agree with you the vast majority of the time. Your position often seems quite reasonable.

Anyone who posts after me, exercise courtesy and charity. Otherwise, I’ll delete your comment. We’re adults here, I really wish we’d act like it.

Joe, you are a Chesterton-Belloc fellow-traveler!

Distributism = Communism? Somebody let GKC know.

That said, I sorta see the argument (without considering in the slightest any distributist a commie), at least to this extent: it would take a massive state intervention to reorder the economy along distributist lines. And it would likely require considerable statist oversight to keep it running that way, short of a serious cultural conversion which would cause people to maintain the system voluntarily.

But the commie charge is a grenade intended to end the conversation (and the distributist, at least in the rhetorical sense), and you are right to object. Strongly. In my book, communist is just as much a conversation ender as Nazi.

Joe,

I can’t seem to go to any Catholic website or forum and talk about Distributism without at least one person accusing me of being a communist.

it is not your distributist proposals that people attack as communist or socialist… it is your endorsement of government economic intervention, through ownership or excessive mandates, government control of healthcare, etc.

While it is not immoral to advocate those policies, to my understanding they are not related to distributism. If you want to be attacked as a “distributist” rather than a “socialist” speak the language of GKC and Belloc.

Instead of a defensive post why not outline the basic principles of distributism?

If it’s voluntary, it’s not communism.

Only when the gov’t comes and forces it does it get bad.

I *like* credit unions. I *like* ranches that are able to offer the hands beef– a part of the company. I like farms that do versions of the same.

I don’t trust the gov’t to promote this without making themselves get paid first, and generously.

Matt

“Instead of a defensive post why not outline the basic principles of distributism?”

I’d have to make a defensive post eventually, so it’s out of the way now

Joe,

I think the government can promote it without controlling it. There’s a key difference.

No history of this ever happening. Promote is different from “incentivize”.

I’m for offering positive incentives for distributist alternatives, not negative incentives against non-distributist models.

They already do and the result is generally not positive, it’s called the “Small Business Administration”.

More firms can move towards a cooperative model without penalizing firms that don’t.

Here is were we may diverge on distributist ideals. It seems to me that the distributist ideal is not the cooperative, but any form where the owners are the workers. I’m self-employed (well technically I am employed by my wife) that is a distributist model. Law firms and other professional partnerships are distributist. Small businesses with employees orient towards distributism by spreading the ownership of the “means of production” among the largest number of people. Even moreso, where those small businesses, offer shares to employees, as many do. In fact, the only way for distributism to be successful in the real world is many, many, small businesses with employees, ideally who are offered shares. The idea of everyone being their own boss is utopian, as not everyone has the wherewithal to run a business. The cooperative is only one entity which can support a distributist principle, but frankly, it doesn’t necessarily do so. Distributism is not just about ownership, it is also about control. I can own many shares of a co-op, however, control is tightly held by the board (not unlike large corporations).

What government interventions or what have you have been proposed, that I agree with?

let’s move on from that.

You don’t seem to understand that the issue of Distributism is separate from the issue of government regulation.

This is exatly what I’m saying:
I’m sure you see MY point, if the biggest defender of distributism is seen as a big defender of government intervention in economy, that some readers may get the mistaken notion that distributism is like socialism. I’m suggesting that that this conflation be disavowed.

I believe that some of the opposition to distributism here is because they’re confusing your fondness of government regulation with distributism. I am not confused, but others might be.

If we had an economy based on workers cooperatives, if the majority of firms were structured in just the way I think they ought to be,

This is utopian. If the majority of firms could be operated by the workers they would be. Most workers are not capable of running a business in a simple system, much less the highly regulated one we have now. Hence my proposal of the small business with employees being offered shares as the ideal of distributism.

even then I would STILL be for government regulation and oversight. Why?

Meanwhile economic liberalism – the idea that the economy should not be regulated, that each individual has unlimited economic freedom, that their cumulative efforts over time will generate the best economic result – has been unambiguously, clearly, condemned.

Can you provide citations? While it’s clear that the Church demands that standards of ethical behaviour must be enforced, not only for individuals but businesses, it does not seem to dictate that people who earn their money ethically should not have the legal right to spend it as they see fit, while maintaining they have a moral obligation to serve the common good. I should think businesses belong in the same category.

The key as always is finding a balance – between economic anarchy and command economies. The most powerful economies the world has ever seen have existed because of extensive private-public collaboration. This ‘free market’ doesn’t even exist, it never has existed. We know that because its most ardent defenders, whenever markets are blamed for any problem, immediately step forward and declare, ‘that’s not the free market’. Ok, so where is it? What does it do? Nowhere and nothing.

And yet you decry the imbalance in this most powerful economy that ever existed despite the private-public collaboration.

For me the choices are not ‘free market’ versus distributism, but rather economic oligarchy in a state-capitalist framework, or economic democracy in a distributist framework. The ‘free market’ isn’t an option, a totally deregulated economy isn’t an option and most of us do not proceed on the naive assumption that it is.

I agree that our current system leans far more towards a state-capitalist oligarchy than free market (I think I’ve said this). But I see distributism as a free market system, and that does not mean total deregulation, but natural law based ethical regulation, less government interference.

To be clear though, distributism does not call for, so that’s a separate topic altogether.

e-
I believe that gov’t will take a mile for every inch given, and fight for more.

That would be why I reject gov’t force.

It’s similar to why I do not want the gov’t involved in general welfare programs.

A should: people should take care of each other.
A should: folks who give their lives to a work should get something out of it.
A should: basic manners.

A should doesn’t mean the gov’t should enforce it.

Incidentally, giving an advantage to some but not all businesses is gov’t support of X business, by removing costs. Similar to how Gov’t encourages marriage by removing tax burdens. (I know you didn’t mention it, just putting this out there.)

Mike,

I’m talking about workers cooperatives, in which the workers are the owners.

“A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that the majority of its workforce own shares, and the majority of shares are owned by the workforce.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative

Though I’m a fan of all kinds.