The Virtue of the Distributist

[God Conquers]

The practicality of instituting distributism is at the moment its greatest difficulty.

But having public health care solves the hospital problem.

[Guest Aluigi]

you need a strong guild system to keep the economic stability of big business. the local McDonald's will become Joe's Burger Place but also a member of the McDonald's Guild that fixes prices and standards. It's not about robbing anybody, but rather taking the slavery property out of the slave owner's hands.

With many small businesses working together and connected with good strong guild systems (not a mere union, a real guild) research would still be extremely workable. Small businesses work together without creating a distant higher class (the higher class is close to the lower class). The benefits of big business capitalism would be kept in tact by guilds who would be the main funders of the research.

In the short term it looks nice to make socialized healthcare, but it makes people dependent on the government. That is not the government's place.

[MichaelFilo]

How would public health care do it? It would require people to work for the government, wouldn't it (I am not aware of how it works, per se)? If so, then you have people working for a business again, except for it's the government.

God bless,
Mikey

[Guest Aluigi]

I am against government healthcare. It is not the government's place.

Take something good and put it into an unattainable unownable place (like public government) and people become DEPENDANT on that place, on that government.

Hey, wouldn't it be nice if we were provided food directly for our labor?
The African slaves didn't think so.

Same thing for everything else. Once you are dependent on the government for your healthcare, it holds more power over you. Ronald Reagan noticed it, but way before him Hillaire Belloc and G.K. Chesterton noticed it.

[quote]  In the absence, the gradual decline (where it is declining) of
the Catholic ethic, slavery is coming back.  Anyone with eyes to see
can watch it coming back slowly but certainly--like a tide.  Slowly
but certainly the proletarian, by every political reform which
secures his well-being under new rules of insurance, of State control
in education, of State medicine and the rest, is developing into the
slave, leaving the rich man apart and free.  All industrial
civilization is clearly moving towards the reestablishment of the
Servile State, a matter I have discussed at greater length under the
title of "the New Paganism."[/quote]

-Hillaire Belloc, "The Faith and Industrial Capitalism"

<but we've digressed from the pro-distributist thread into an anti-socialist anti-capitlist combo. but if that is what is needed to clarify what distributism is, sobeit. don't let this sidetrack overwhelm the discussion>

Edited January 27, 2005 by Aluigi

[MichaelFilo]

If I understand this correctly, big companies don't lose anything, except ownership of their property. In exchange they get people who run their stores, make all the money, and get to name some guild after the former owner of their "stores"? Go on to explain a little here, what do you do? I've never read the book, so make it clear to me how exactly you turn big companies into small businesses without robbing the big companies?

God bless,

Mikey

[Guest Aluigi]

the big company has no right to exist so largely anyway and hoard ownership of means of production from the rest of mankind. the big company is broken up by all its locations and everything. Each place is now an individual business owned and operated by the guy that manages it. The big business structure stays in place under the form of a guild which sets prices and standards. The small businesses would voluntarily be members of this guild, it would be advantageous for them anyway. The guild sets prices and standards and probably leads the way in research in the department or there will be individual researching companies. whatever gets it done (there are obviously kinks to work out to introduce this to the modern world). But Joe's burger place is now owned by Joe, not by the corperation. The people work for Joe, not the McDonald's franchise. Joe is the high class and his employees are the low class, but there is a great relationship cultivated in that closeness of the classes and the means of production are now privately owned rather than corporately owned.

[MichaelFilo]

that doesn't explain what happens to the owner of McDonalds.

You said large companies don't have the right to exist. Thats kind of funny,because they do.

Unless you can find some legal and moral solution to stealing all this money from coperation owners, you are doing an unjust thing.

God bless,

Mikey

[Guest Aluigi]

they have about as much right to exist as slave owners.

the owner of McDonald's now simply owns his own small business.

It is not theft. The means of production are no longer greedily hoarded by a few people who then in turn make use of others' labor.

big businesses like that only have a right to exist in an indifferent economic system, not one based on Christian economic morality. There is no problem with someone owning more than someone else because they worked harder. but when they own more means of production than someone else preventing others from being able to work as hard as they did to get that, that becomes unjust. That's what happens in coorperations. Small businesses are the key to economic morality that the means of production are more evenly distributed.

[Guest Aluigi]

okay, let me clarify how I completely oppose any form of stealing (though some distributists have fallen into the trap of thinking socialistic theft is the way to bring about distributism, by confiscating wealth from people. in fact, I just sent in a comment to distributism.com complaining about just that.)

I'm talking about disbanding large corporations the way monopolies tend to be disbanded. Though, not in the corrupt ineffective disbanding done by the government nowadays, a complete disbanding into small businesses that do not have many locations. What is my justification? In a corporation specific people take a monopoly on the means of production that prevents the smaller person from owning their own means of production.

Then once they're all disbanded, they shall no longer be allowed to form. There are thus small businesses, strong economy and developement through a strong guild system but more people who own their own means of production.

[MichaelFilo]

Which is all good and nice, and sounds good in theory, but you are still taking away big companies' money and their sources of income. In slavery, all slave owners lost their legally rightful property (slaves) without being compensated. In distributalism, you are taking away the slave owner's rightful property (their big business) and also not compensating them. However, you are splitting what they own amongst other people. This is re-distributing their wealth, and this is socialism.

God bless,
Mikey

[Guest Aluigi]

nope, but it is very common for people to try to paint it as socialism. it is not. in fact, it is far far RIGHT of the spectrum. socialism is pretty far left.

Anyway, corperations are dissolved. No property or wealth is taken from anybody, the corporation is split into many small businesses. If you honestly believe that this slavery is their just property, you should really think about that. You're applying one good factor-- private property, across the board forgetting that it can also be evil-- owning people who do not have control over their own means of production. You work hard to provide for your family and all that, and your business is not allowed to spread over and take over the mass of means of production. you can have a productive and successful business (if you're business is the hardest working) but you cannot span the entire nation and make other people do your bidding with your means of production. you have a problem with my example of how to make it happen, saying that that is a socialist principle. but I reject the mistaken socialist ideas that people think will establish distributism. The dissolving of coorperations is by no means socialist, private property is completely respected. What is reshpaed is the person's business structure, he is not allowed to own a vast empire of businesses (plantations) in which remote people are doing the work.

[Guest Aluigi]

also, in my plan I am not a politician, I am starting a large business designed to break apart. the business will support the developement of more small companies in all other areas through just non-usurious loans. revolution from the private sector, show how beneficial it can be, and then a limitation against coorporation could be instituted by a politician and more businesses would follow the model paved by my company. that's my idea.

[MichaelFilo]

The problem is, taking away the plantations from the slave owner is unjust as far as legal terms BECAUSE, you gave him the right to own those plantations and those workers. You'd have to at least compensate from this. Even the freeing of the slaves was legally unjust, the government took away a right it had given and didn't even begin to compensate for it.

Same with big business, you cannot let it expand to such extremes and then choose to take away the empire with no compensation.This is legally unsound. I don't support slavery or big business, but I don't support taking away either without compensation unless they want to do it on their own will. Like Socartes said in the socialism thread, it's not virtous if the government forces anyone into doing a virtous deed. Same with this, it's not right for the government to pull something like this, even if it is better, against the big business's will. At best, it can force and compensate, but thats highly unlikely considering the amount it would take to compensate for this. (Another example would be forcing slave owners to stop "owning" slaves. It's nice to give people freedom, but you must compensate for the thing you are taking away fromt he people, on a legal level anyways).

God bless,
Mikey

[Guest Aluigi]

illegalizing slavery was morally just regardless of what man's law says. thus you illegalize slavery and then free the slaves.

illegalizing coorperations and franchises would be morally just regardless of what man's law says. thus you illegalize the coorperations and dissolve them.

just because we've let the Reformation turn us into a big business corporate capitalist society doesn't mean God's moral law doesn't still apply in which people ought to be able to own their own means of production privately.

[MichaelFilo]

Morally, all this acceptable, but these are TEMPORAL matters, and should be treated as such. You don't commit a Moral virtue at the expense of another, this isn't a virtue, this isn't goodness to anyone. If you steal from someone, whether unjust their position or not morally, what fault of theirs is it that theya re to be punished by law that they abided too? If you take a temporal action, you must consider temporal consequences. You cannot punish big business owners because they followed the law without compensation. This is morally wrong, even if your end is morally just. To punish a person who works within the law by taking away what they lawfully gained maybe morally good, but must be lawfully compensated for. As of yet, I see no way of compensating for taking away big business owner's businesses...

God bless,
Mikey