5 ms·

Maybe it's because I'm a Protestant who's not particularly invested in Roman Catholic social teaching and so I haven't learned the nuances, but it seems to me t

Maybe it's because I'm a Protestant who's not particularly invested in Roman Catholic social teaching and so I haven't learned the nuances, but it seems to me that when you apply distributism to an industrial or post-industrial society and work out the kinks you end up with either capitalism or socialism. It's straightforward to apply distributism to an agrarian society where land is the main source of wealth: split up the farmland among a bunch of smallholding farmers.¹ But once a meaningful part of your economy is in capital-intensive industries, you have a decision to make: do you allow private individuals to accumulate capital or not? If you do, you soon have a capitalist society. If you do not, or you allow them to accumulate capital but not to benefit from it, you end up with a socialist society. The examples in the Wikipedia article confirm this impression. Distributism looks to me like someone took the principle of subsidiarity and the role of the family, saw that they got more respect in the late middle ages, and pined for the economic system of that era. It would be interesting and productive to re-examine some of the underlying assumptions there. ¹ Whether land reform is just is a separate issue; at least it is possible.

EGreg 8y ago
You end up with OPEN SOURCE
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Interestingly, Protestantism is tied up with the history of capitalism. I think it's worthwhile to think about systems that don't reduce to either capitalism or socialism. (Though, in the spirit of reductionism, one can imagine capitalism as reducing to socialism in the long term: you can allow private individuals to accumulate capital, but ultimately it'll end up in the hands of a few individuals, who will be a de facto government.)
jawns 8y ago
It's not an either-or thing, where if you allow people to accumulate productive resources, you inevitably get capitalism, and if you don't, you inevitably get socialism. This is tremendously simplified, but I would say that if you allow people to accumulate productive resources and your economic policies prioritize market efficiency above all else, then you're likely to end up with laissez-faire capitalism. However, if you have economic policies in place that prioritize widespread ownership (for instance, by incentivizing small-business ownership or cooperatives), that might lead to some short-term market inefficiencies but may promote beneficial long-term effects. For instance, it might help them compete against larger corporations whose only advantage is economies of scale, but which wipe out otherwise healthy small businesses and then enjoy near-monopoly status.
bmj 8y ago
While not explicitly distributist in their thinking, many of the so-called Kuyperian or Neocalvinist theologians pick up the strands of Catholic subsidiarity (a critical piece of distributist thought) and call it sphere sovereignty. That said, many Neocalvinists end up becoming rather ardent supporters of Catholic-tinted capitalism, such as the Acton Institute.

EGreg 8y ago

You end up with OPEN SOURCE

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

Interestingly, Protestantism is tied up with the history of capitalism. I think it's worthwhile to think about systems that don't reduce to either capitalism or socialism. (Though, in the spirit of reductionism, one can imagine capitalism as reducing to socialism in the long term: you can allow private individuals to accumulate capital, but ultimately it'll end up in the hands of a few individuals, who will be a de facto government.)

jawns 8y ago

It's not an either-or thing, where if you allow people to accumulate productive resources, you inevitably get capitalism, and if you don't, you inevitably get socialism. This is tremendously simplified, but I would say that if you allow people to accumulate productive resources and your economic policies prioritize market efficiency above all else, then you're likely to end up with laissez-faire capitalism. However, if you have economic policies in place that prioritize widespread ownership (for instance, by incentivizing small-business ownership or cooperatives), that might lead to some short-term market inefficiencies but may promote beneficial long-term effects. For instance, it might help them compete against larger corporations whose only advantage is economies of scale, but which wipe out otherwise healthy small businesses and then enjoy near-monopoly status.

bmj 8y ago

While not explicitly distributist in their thinking, many of the so-called Kuyperian or Neocalvinist theologians pick up the strands of Catholic subsidiarity (a critical piece of distributist thought) and call it sphere sovereignty. That said, many Neocalvinists end up becoming rather ardent supporters of Catholic-tinted capitalism, such as the Acton Institute.