The Virtue of the Distributist

[Guest Aluigi]

The dispensation of corporations is not stealing from anyone. The coorporation is split up. Nothing is taken from anyone. When a monopoly is split up, do you consider that stealing from the owner of the monopoly? It is nowhere near that.

Nothing is stolen, a big business is dispersed into many small businesses owned by the people who used to simply manage each of these small businesses. This is considering the right of the human person to own their own private property and their own means of production.

[MichaelFilo]

But you are stealing. You keep avoind the very prevelant fact that you are taking what a person has lawfully built up and have divided and dispersed it to other people. The original owner has had their company TAKEN away to provide for this economic ideology. Sadly, you fail to acknowledge that a person owns these companies, and that by taking them away from that someone and splitting it among other peopkle, you are taking away (stealing) what they have lawfully built up without ANY compensation except a pat on the back that they were nice by force, and had no real other option. This is wrong morally and lawfully.


The right to own private property and even the means of production should be met, just not at the expense of big businesses owners. All you have propsed is you take awy the big business and leave the owners without something they built up by law. There needs to be some compensation, and it should be in full. There is no practical way to do this.


God bless,

Mikey

[Guest Aluigi]

I am sorry that I fail to acknowledge the ownership of slaveowners over slaves, but I do not. I believe in a moral economy not an indifferent economy.

[MichaelFilo]

It is not morally just, but it is also not morally just to turn the laws of the land against the people who worked within those laws to unjustly treat them. It is not by any means wrong to compensate someone for an injustice against them, but if you are committing an injustice, you should at least do something to compensate. Whether you choose to recognize the slave owner as being within the law's framework and as such should rightly receive a compensation to free the slave from the law's propogators or not makes no difference, it is unjust to steal fromt he slave owner just like it's wrong to enslave the man. It is worse yet to be the body that allowed the enslavement and then to rectify this action they steal from those they gave power to enslave. God gives power to all nations, and when He takes all power away, he isn't going to judge all national leaders on the premise that they carried out His Will but now it changed, and as such they are in violation of His Will. Because His Will (the law) if it changes, must be compensated (God's kingdom to rule over all the world), and if not then an injustice occurs to punish the nations (take away their power) after that power was granted them by God.

God bless,

Mikey

[Oik]

Actually, justice requires order. Even if something unjust, by just means, was made a law or institution, it does not make that unjust thing worthy of justice.

Just means must be used to disperse it (which I believe Al is saying), but no compensation would be required, at least not in the modern sense of compensation.

HOWEVER, I think I understand what Mich is trying to get at. You can't just do a way with something, even justly, without offering an alternative. In the case of slavery, it is historical that no real compensation was offered and so a small amount of southerners were productively hurt. However, just recourse (unfortunately at the expense of blacks) was granted as southerners did win reconstruction, altough they lost the war. This is of course why I support stipends for blacks who can prove thier connections to once slave relatives.

My conclusion is that it would be unjust to disban corporations *IF* no alternative means were provide, however, Al has addressed and offered those means.

The corporate being would lose its identity and its money, but no worker or human being would. A corporate being would still, in some sense (or matters of law) exist, but in a lesser was that it does in modern times.

[MichaelFilo]

The alternative is where? They lose their money, their empire, their company, their status, and get nothing in return. Yes I do mean compensation in the modern terms, you must give something of equal value to them.

God bless,
Mikey

[Mary's Knight, La]

Here's the problem i have with converting to distributionist

1.) all corporations started out smaller quite often with only a few owners - as profit increased they bought more of the means of production. to disband corporations would be to take away legally acquired goods (buildings, machines, patents, etc...) there is no way to convert without this happening

2.) right now you claim workers are slaves to the corporation this is a problem with the workers mindset when workers realize they too are sellers (of their time and energy) then they can act to correct injustices in the economy. corporations became big by people buying their products the government need only prevent corporations from unfair competition and let the consumer decide which businesses grow and which don't

3.) the guild system works unfairly against the consumer, in the guild system all prices are set by the guild according to the skill of the workman however the problem is this skill is evaluated by the guild rather than the consumer thus consumers may be forced to overpay because the guild forces the prices too high.
capitalism allows cooperation between consumer and seller to set the price and effectively allows consumers to rate the work.

You can say many bad things about capitalism however, most people who badmouth it forget they are supposed to be active participants in the economy rather than passive victims. If capitalism has gone awry it's because both sellers and consumers neglected their responsibility.

I could say the same for our government, if it has gone awry and I think it has in some cases, both the government and the people neglected their responsibility.

We don't need a different system we need people to get off their butts.

[Guest Aluigi]

the problem of capitalism is laissaiz faire, it promotes moral indifference. morality and the economy are separated.

Christendom worked a lot better with a distributist system, and it was moral too.

There would still be competition, multiple guilds per trade and different prices and standards.

Those things started out small and then went and got big. Split them up into multiple small ones again. We're not making the owners poor, just setting proximity and labor laws that make it so the owner of a store also must manage that specific store. The means of production are thus given more of a chance to be evenly distributed, there is still perfect competition and the chance to work harder to make your life better, there's just more oppurtunity to own and businesses are kept in proximity and locality to the consumer. The bridge between the classes is bridged by friendship and loyalty and the consumer still has a choice, just now the choice is between the multiple local businesses, that are probably tied to different guilds or whatever, instead of the choice between the Walmart or the K-Mart. The guilds are simply structured to keep economic stability and the setting of standards is the most important thing they would do. The setting of prices would still be done with consideration to what the people will pay for it.

I define a slave as someone who does not own his own means of production and works using another person's means of production in exchange for their livelihood.

I am not whining about people being poor or declaring that all poor people should just be made not poor or anything of the sort. The oppurtunity for them to own needs to be established because right now all they can do is sell their time and their labor, their very selves, into a corporation in exchange for any money. They ought to offer something, something they own, skill and tools and land they own. This isn't merely about correcting injustices, this is about instituting a just system where ownership of means of production exists among everyone.

Capitalism promotes indifference and takes away the ability to own means of production from most people by offering monopoly on the means of production to the person who will grab as much of it as they can. That's not just-- people just gobbeling up as much means of production as they can.

Edited January 28, 2005 by Aluigi

[MichaelFilo]

Alugi, you fail to point out how the owner doesn't lose. They have to lose quite a bit to get this to the local level. It means that the owner loses all his companies possessions except for one store... one store and everything else is taken (robbed, swindled, or what have you).

For the sake of arugement, how does capitalism make for moral indifference?

The definition of Laissez faire is :

An economic doctrine that opposes governmental regulation of or interference in commerce beyond the minimum necessary for a free-enterprise system to operate according to its own economic laws.

Where is the moral indifference?

God bless,
Mikey

[dairygirl4u2c]

It seems to me that the system of capitalism can be said to be neutral if you want to call it that. If the people that are using it are nice, then it's a good system. If the economics get tight and people still are nice, then wow.

But then you have our reality. Capitalism isn't still inherently bad necessarily. You might wander what to call it though when we say we should allow this capitalism, given that people are not good. Many "conservatives" (noting that I don't like using labels like that that automatically spark bias etc) would say that Christians should take control then. But then what if the christians don't? And those same christians are saying that capitalism should be instilled, given that they or other christians don't do anything to help the unfortunate?

I personally say that we should face reality and realize that if the reality of the situation is that capitalism is hurting people and those hurting people aren't being helped, then we should subdue the capitalism. Let capitalism go, but subdue it with regulations.

YOu might wander how christians will ever sart helping if there's subdued? Well, I can coverall and say that the regulators can figure that out. It needs to be a local effort collaborating with a national greater level. If christians think the regulations are immoral, and would rather help people, then by God let them take people out of government help. Let them stop regulations that only seek to stop employers from taking advantage of their workers.

You have a guy named Bob. There's lots of peole that are at bob's level. Then you havea guy named Bill. (G) Is it right that Bill can pit Bob against all the other people at his level when the other people can't catch a break? I think natural law would let these peole fight Bill to get food (or what have you). Yet we regulate them from fighting Bill too!


We then say that christians should help these people who are being exploited............ (shouldn't the regulations not allow exploitation in the first place)



Edit:
But I do admit that I don't know the reality of the situation. Maybe people aren't having problems. But if that is the case then we shouldn't be arguing about this. Or, if we do argue about it theoretically, "conservatives" sholdn't get put into the corner as I had pretty much put most of them in this post, and then cop out and say that the reality of the situation is that they aren't being hurt. Remember, we're talking about the theory of the situation!

Edited January 28, 2005 by dairygirl4u2c

[Guest Aluigi]

The guy who owns a gigantic business now has to comply with the new proximity ownership laws. When the government ordered Microsoft to split, was it stealing from Bill Gates? no. it was enacting federal anti-trust laws. So, pass the distributist legislation, and order companies to split. No one is being stolen from.

Illegalize dog-in-the-manger squatting (which has always been considered immoral anyway) and then order the companies to dissolve. The guy that used to own the wide-spanning company using it for his wealth now owns one company.

This was something that was outlawed in Christendom and is allowed today. Simply outlaw it again, while you're outlawing abortion and demolishing planned parenthood you can outlaw ditm-squatting and split big businesses.

[quote][b]"Dog-in-the-manger"' Squatting
[/b]the denial of a limited resource (usually by legal claim) without real intention of personal use, but with the intention of gaining immoral wealth by holding out until the one who needs it is desperate.' [/quote]

That's what big business owners basically do with the means of production and ownership of businesses. They own the means of production without real intention of PERSONAL use and wait until the people of lower classes are desperate enough that they sell their time and energy to the corporation, their very selves.

It's an immoral practice, and the fact that the people practicing it are suddenly not allowed to practice it doesn't concern me in the least.

dairygirl, if you advocate socialism then I'd say go to my "the sin of the socialist" thread. otherwise, consider distributism! Capitalism does allow for either good or evil to occur, and in that sense it promotes indifference.

Edited January 28, 2005 by Aluigi

[dairygirl4u2c]

i apologize for not reading this thread very closely. i assumed it was a capitalist versus socialist debate. i despise pure socialism perhaps more than pure capitalism. that's why in my world, socialism is only the small segment stopping the big.

i think i might agree with distributionism. sorry for the confusion.

[MichaelFilo]

Before I start attacking the primary comments (and by attack I do mean in the strictly take and give of debate), I'd like to say, why isn't socartes on here, he's one who'd whole heartedly disagree that economics somewhow affect morality, at least he did with me.
However, indifference isn't equal to being able to do bad or good, because in all reality, even a crucifix can be used for good or bad. Nothing is wholly pure that is material, only the immaterial God is wholly good. So everything has a capacity for both good and bad.
Having an economic system, whatever it may be may do good or bad. This isn't immoral or indifferent, this is secular freedom. Essentially, secular freedoim is like our free will since it can do both good and bad. Christian freedom is freedom of the soul, and can only do good. Either way, thats off topic.

Splitting companies is something that happened because of regulations of monopolies and such, and those rules were already there. That is, if a government hasn't instilled these rules prior to, they'd be wrong. By promoting distributalism you'd actually be promoting an economic form that the government had NO intention to instill, the lawas didn't support, and the whole country promoted a different one. It would be wrong.


Now, as far as distributalism, I have come to love it because of you. It is the moral solution to this very immoral economic state we are in.

God bless,
Mikey

[dairygirl4u2c]

acutally i love distributionism!! it's what i've been thinking all this time only spelled out better. catholics always talk about how people have property rights etc. to justify capitalism.

i say now is the time for the notion of imperative property rights for capitalism to develop into the notion of imperative pr's for distributionism.

[Guest Aluigi]

... See, Catholicism has a lot to offer

Anyway, Mich, I'm not advocating going in and randomly dividing companies. I'm saying if distributists were elected and made proximity ownership laws et cetera, then the companies would be ordered to split. When anti-monopolies laws were first created, they were used against companies that had legally become monopolies. The same thing would happen here.