Excellent! It always warms my heart to see Distributism getting a shout-out! At the end of the day, whether the State controls the handful of large enterprises that dominate the economy, or whether such enterprises (and their bankster owners) control the State, makes little difference to the average man who has no control over the State or the handful of large enterprises that collectively control almost everything for the benefit of a tiny elite. As Chesterton noted, private property (especially private productive property like a family farm or business) is a critically important good, and should therefore be enjoyed by as many people as possible. What stands in the way of that in America seems to be: (1) the bankster financial system and crony-capitalist state interference in the economy that rig the game to favor the very elite, and (2) the vacuous culture which enshrines no higher values than soulless consumerism (and in which everything, no matter how immaterial, is commoditized and repackaged in such a way so as to help the rent-seeking banksters use it to extract as much money from regular people as possible). Not enough attention is paid to the second of these, which makes your writing on this topic all the more important.
As a start, go after Keynesian Economics, which explicitly calls for stimulating demand. Go to the greenies and point this out to them. To live as true humans we need Unemployed Resources. That is, to build a thing from beginning to end requires different tools at different stages. The craftsman has tools sitting idle. The worker unit in the assembly line serves to keep the tools running at full utilization.
The remind the Right that deficit spending is a subsidy for the already rich. The Santa Claus economics of the Reagan years and beyond made stockholders rich, but gutted much of the middle class.
Then we need to end fractional reserve banking and break up the monster banks encouraged by our regulators under the mistaken theory that largeness averages out the ups and downs of local economies.
Fantastic, succinct approach. In particular the former point, while there is a plenty large regrowth constituency within the greens (which has it's own issues), they by and large miss the forest for the trees constantly
The true greens (vs. the watermelons) are true reactionaries. "Buy local" is Trumpism Extra Strength.
They just don't fully realize how inherently right wing they are -- because the official Right embraced thinly veiled Keynsian economics during the Reagan years..
I will be covering the true greens in great detail when I get to Rule 11. The blasts on the Republican version of Santa Claus Economics will be coming sooner: Rule 9.
It may not be as neo-reactionary as you'd like, but I'm serializing a translation of Andrew Lobaczewski's book, Logocracy, which you my appreciate at least parts of, T.C. It draws on Catholic Social Teaching, out of which distributism grew, I believe. Basically, it is his view of a "system better than democracy," which draws on aspects of various political systems. He envisions two types of logocracies, either republics or monarchies. I think a lot of what you have here is at least consistent with what he envisioned. Anyways, great article. Thank you!
Within a distributist system, the emphasis of economic activity would not be on the maximisation of profit at the expense of moral, ethical, and communitarian concerns.
Who defines these moral, ethical, and communitarian standards? Who decides what an "ordinary house" that would "please nearly everyone" is?
Part of the uniqueness of the Japanese economy is that a lot of money goes to renovating old temples and paying deference to the past. This leads to healthy emulation. Argentinians, on the other hand, are broke from bribing the poore classes.
Perhaps in its current state. But after reading this piece, it seems like it would be well worth it to try to flesh out and concretize-- seems like it might just have the potential to solve a lot of societal problems
There are, and can be, only two economic systems: free market, when people do work for economic reward, and command, where people do work for fear of punishment. All other purported economic systems, e.g., "True Communism", Distributism, etc., are mere collections of platitudes that will of necessity collapse into a combination of one of the two.
We're watching in real time as the middle class gets squeezed out of property ownership and middle-class security-- it seems like it would be worthwhile to re-incentivize home ownership for families and broad dispersion of means of production where possible. What might a system look like that has a healthy respect for the free market, totally and completely avoids centralized economic planning, and also prioritizes broader social well-being / pushes people towards the middle class? It's at the very least a question worth considering
> We're watching in real time as the middle class gets squeezed out of property ownership and middle-class security
Unintended consequence of the previous generations' attempts to fix the "unfairness" of market economics.
> it seems like it would be worthwhile to re-incentivize home ownership for families and broad dispersion of means of production where possible.
Incentivizing home ownership to those who couldn't afford it is how we got the great recession.
The immediate cause of our economic problems is inflation caused by excessive money printing, ultimately caused by the need to pay for all the Ponzi schemes that the New Deal and Great Society programs ultimately turned into, as well as the various parasites they acquired over the decades.
> Unintended consequence of the previous generations' attempts to fix the "unfairness" of market economics.
I mean, probably
> Incentivizing home ownership to those who couldn't afford it is how we got the great recession.
I didn't say "for those who couldn't afford it," for this exact reason.
I don't think we disagree all that much. I think that distributing privately-held property and the means to produce and/or sustain yourself locally is hugely important to a robust society, and those are both being slowly bled out of the majority of the population. The market is infinitely superior to a centrally planned/force-based economy, so my thought is, what might a system look like that respects both of these facts? We're at a critical point in the West, and I think we might have to start thinking out of the box, or the consequences could be dire.
“we must focus on the quest to once again regain the things that enlarge and embolden the human spirit, those very things which libertarians and economic conservatives often dismiss as “useless.””
Do they really? Which… otherwise an excellent article which I’m very happy to have read.
Wholly and entirely : Yes.
Let us begin this task.
Excellent! It always warms my heart to see Distributism getting a shout-out! At the end of the day, whether the State controls the handful of large enterprises that dominate the economy, or whether such enterprises (and their bankster owners) control the State, makes little difference to the average man who has no control over the State or the handful of large enterprises that collectively control almost everything for the benefit of a tiny elite. As Chesterton noted, private property (especially private productive property like a family farm or business) is a critically important good, and should therefore be enjoyed by as many people as possible. What stands in the way of that in America seems to be: (1) the bankster financial system and crony-capitalist state interference in the economy that rig the game to favor the very elite, and (2) the vacuous culture which enshrines no higher values than soulless consumerism (and in which everything, no matter how immaterial, is commoditized and repackaged in such a way so as to help the rent-seeking banksters use it to extract as much money from regular people as possible). Not enough attention is paid to the second of these, which makes your writing on this topic all the more important.
“The surgery was successful, but the patient died.”
“The economy was successful, but society dissipated.”
"Your form was excellent, but you missed the target."
The question of How comes to mind.
As a start, go after Keynesian Economics, which explicitly calls for stimulating demand. Go to the greenies and point this out to them. To live as true humans we need Unemployed Resources. That is, to build a thing from beginning to end requires different tools at different stages. The craftsman has tools sitting idle. The worker unit in the assembly line serves to keep the tools running at full utilization.
The remind the Right that deficit spending is a subsidy for the already rich. The Santa Claus economics of the Reagan years and beyond made stockholders rich, but gutted much of the middle class.
Then we need to end fractional reserve banking and break up the monster banks encouraged by our regulators under the mistaken theory that largeness averages out the ups and downs of local economies.
Fantastic, succinct approach. In particular the former point, while there is a plenty large regrowth constituency within the greens (which has it's own issues), they by and large miss the forest for the trees constantly
The true greens (vs. the watermelons) are true reactionaries. "Buy local" is Trumpism Extra Strength.
They just don't fully realize how inherently right wing they are -- because the official Right embraced thinly veiled Keynsian economics during the Reagan years..
I will be covering the true greens in great detail when I get to Rule 11. The blasts on the Republican version of Santa Claus Economics will be coming sooner: Rule 9.
It may not be as neo-reactionary as you'd like, but I'm serializing a translation of Andrew Lobaczewski's book, Logocracy, which you my appreciate at least parts of, T.C. It draws on Catholic Social Teaching, out of which distributism grew, I believe. Basically, it is his view of a "system better than democracy," which draws on aspects of various political systems. He envisions two types of logocracies, either republics or monarchies. I think a lot of what you have here is at least consistent with what he envisioned. Anyways, great article. Thank you!
Within a distributist system, the emphasis of economic activity would not be on the maximisation of profit at the expense of moral, ethical, and communitarian concerns.
Who defines these moral, ethical, and communitarian standards? Who decides what an "ordinary house" that would "please nearly everyone" is?
Part of the uniqueness of the Japanese economy is that a lot of money goes to renovating old temples and paying deference to the past. This leads to healthy emulation. Argentinians, on the other hand, are broke from bribing the poore classes.
Distributism is a collection of economic platitudes masquerading as an economic theory.
Perhaps in its current state. But after reading this piece, it seems like it would be well worth it to try to flesh out and concretize-- seems like it might just have the potential to solve a lot of societal problems
There are, and can be, only two economic systems: free market, when people do work for economic reward, and command, where people do work for fear of punishment. All other purported economic systems, e.g., "True Communism", Distributism, etc., are mere collections of platitudes that will of necessity collapse into a combination of one of the two.
Muh false bianaries.
We're watching in real time as the middle class gets squeezed out of property ownership and middle-class security-- it seems like it would be worthwhile to re-incentivize home ownership for families and broad dispersion of means of production where possible. What might a system look like that has a healthy respect for the free market, totally and completely avoids centralized economic planning, and also prioritizes broader social well-being / pushes people towards the middle class? It's at the very least a question worth considering
> We're watching in real time as the middle class gets squeezed out of property ownership and middle-class security
Unintended consequence of the previous generations' attempts to fix the "unfairness" of market economics.
> it seems like it would be worthwhile to re-incentivize home ownership for families and broad dispersion of means of production where possible.
Incentivizing home ownership to those who couldn't afford it is how we got the great recession.
The immediate cause of our economic problems is inflation caused by excessive money printing, ultimately caused by the need to pay for all the Ponzi schemes that the New Deal and Great Society programs ultimately turned into, as well as the various parasites they acquired over the decades.
> Unintended consequence of the previous generations' attempts to fix the "unfairness" of market economics.
I mean, probably
> Incentivizing home ownership to those who couldn't afford it is how we got the great recession.
I didn't say "for those who couldn't afford it," for this exact reason.
I don't think we disagree all that much. I think that distributing privately-held property and the means to produce and/or sustain yourself locally is hugely important to a robust society, and those are both being slowly bled out of the majority of the population. The market is infinitely superior to a centrally planned/force-based economy, so my thought is, what might a system look like that respects both of these facts? We're at a critical point in the West, and I think we might have to start thinking out of the box, or the consequences could be dire.
Economic theories are nothing but rationalizations for enslavement by usury Jews.
“we must focus on the quest to once again regain the things that enlarge and embolden the human spirit, those very things which libertarians and economic conservatives often dismiss as “useless.””
Do they really? Which… otherwise an excellent article which I’m very happy to have read.
Yes really because they are Jew tools who only think in shekels.