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What about large-scale projects which aren't possible without concentration of productive assets and capital? Does this doctrine addresses that? Can we have su

What about large-scale projects which aren't possible without concentration of productive assets and capital? Does this doctrine addresses that? Can we have sustained energy production or trans-Atlantic internet cables or satellites or Teslas with it?

mwilcox 8y ago
It's about distributed _ownership_ not necessarily physical distribution
geowwy 8y ago
From the article: > Distributism puts great emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity. This > principle holds that no larger unit (whether social, economic, or political) > should perform a function which can be performed by a smaller unit. The point is that you should try and keep things as small as feasible. When it's not feasible you use bigger institutions.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  It does raise an interesting question though. If the system kept a lid on the size of the computer companies in the nineties how would a business like Apple accumulate enough capital to fund the development of a product like the iPhone. We might all still be playing Snake on our dumb phones.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    So, no FB, Twitter, walled gardens, BS apps, rat race to replace, and 3 hours per day staring at a mobile screen? Sounds like a deal! Where can I get this Snake thing (Google Maps aside)?
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Music, maps and route finding, weather forecasts, password management, calculator, email on the go, library loans, camera, calendar, chats with my friends and family, all on the first page of my phone. I wouldn't want to give it up now.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        Music that still mattered culturally and need some minimal menial effort to consume (and not just overconsume and mostly skip), more adventurous route finding, weather forecasts one could still have (and still be wrong most of the time) back in the day, no need for password management or calculators most of the time (and when one needs the latter, there's Casio awesome calculator watches, liberty from email and chats on the go, real camera for people actually invested in the art and less photo and selfie pollution, -- yep, I'll have that Snake game!
        tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        You are jumping to a lot of conclusions about my consumptive habits there :)
        coldtea 8y ago
        Was talking about mine, but probably they match :) E.g. I did large roadtrips (e.g. Route 66 style) in 2000-2005 (before I got a GPS) and I do roadtrips now every year (well, never stopped). I far more prefer the experience before I could just take out my iPhone and check everything on the map.
- michaelt 8y ago
  How would that interact with the situation where a smaller system just about works OK, but a larger system works better? For example, we could devolve wireless spectrum management to cities. But it would be jolly inconvenient if San Francisco and San Jose required mutually incompatible wifi hardware.
  - ben509 8y ago
    It seems like you could have a government that was primarily focused on standards and contract enforcement, so companies could build any kind of hardware they liked, but the government would be able to push them to build it according to a broader standard.
- jondubois 8y ago
  When I read the comment, I thought about companies like Boeing, Airbus, Intel, ARM, Bayer... They sound very capital intensive but I think they could still be more efficient if they were broken up. If you were to analyse these companies, they are already in fact be broken up into hundreds or thousands of small teams. The difference is that these small teams are not separate businesses; they are often not held directly accountable for their work and they do not reap the rewards of their own work (incentive is missing) and so the company has to spend a huge amount of resources to implement checks and balances to make sure that everyone stays in line and this slows everything down to a crawl. Most people who work for big companies are focused on office politics instead of value production. People who work for corporations are subjected to coercion (and managed through fear) on a daily basis under the pretext that it's more efficient in terms of value production... But in reality, corporate coercion is only useful as a mechanism for capturing value, not to produce it. The real goal of corporate structures is to channel existing output value into a small number of shareholder hands but it causes a reduction in the total output value and greatly reduces workers' ability to capture the value that they produce.
coldtea 8y ago
Well, there's an idea that we shouldn't have those things in the first place ("sustained energy production") for environmental reasons, which would go well with distributism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
matt4077 8y ago
In a certain sense, large companies are a failure of market economies. Because the rules and mechanism of a market are often suspended within the firm. It’s not impossible to imagine something like Tesla being organized as a loose set of specialized craftspeople, although I would agree that it would likely be less efficient.
larsiusprime 8y ago
Mondragon is an example of a large-scale Distributist enterprise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
1123581321 8y ago
One of the accomplishments distributions point to are European cathedrals, which were built by hundreds/thousands of self-employed craftsman who owned their own tools. A modern equivalent would be a company like Google paying thousands of full-time freelancers to bring their own computers and work on large systems together. Or in the case of a Trans-Atlantic cable, paying independent electrical engineers, electricians, boat owners, etc. to work together to lay the cable. Distribution doesn’t rule out forming collectives, corporations or joint ventures to accomplish tasks, either, and a professional might be part of more than one “employer” in this sense.

mwilcox 8y ago

It's about distributed _ownership_ not necessarily physical distribution

geowwy 8y ago

From the article: > Distributism puts great emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity. This > principle holds that no larger unit (whether social, economic, or political) > should perform a function which can be performed by a smaller unit. The point is that you should try and keep things as small as feasible. When it's not feasible you use bigger institutions.

tonyedgecombe 8y ago
It does raise an interesting question though. If the system kept a lid on the size of the computer companies in the nineties how would a business like Apple accumulate enough capital to fund the development of a product like the iPhone. We might all still be playing Snake on our dumb phones.
- coldtea 8y ago
  So, no FB, Twitter, walled gardens, BS apps, rat race to replace, and 3 hours per day staring at a mobile screen? Sounds like a deal! Where can I get this Snake thing (Google Maps aside)?
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    Music, maps and route finding, weather forecasts, password management, calculator, email on the go, library loans, camera, calendar, chats with my friends and family, all on the first page of my phone. I wouldn't want to give it up now.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Music that still mattered culturally and need some minimal menial effort to consume (and not just overconsume and mostly skip), more adventurous route finding, weather forecasts one could still have (and still be wrong most of the time) back in the day, no need for password management or calculators most of the time (and when one needs the latter, there's Casio awesome calculator watches, liberty from email and chats on the go, real camera for people actually invested in the art and less photo and selfie pollution, -- yep, I'll have that Snake game!
      - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        You are jumping to a lot of conclusions about my consumptive habits there :)
        coldtea 8y ago
        Was talking about mine, but probably they match :) E.g. I did large roadtrips (e.g. Route 66 style) in 2000-2005 (before I got a GPS) and I do roadtrips now every year (well, never stopped). I far more prefer the experience before I could just take out my iPhone and check everything on the map.
michaelt 8y ago
How would that interact with the situation where a smaller system just about works OK, but a larger system works better? For example, we could devolve wireless spectrum management to cities. But it would be jolly inconvenient if San Francisco and San Jose required mutually incompatible wifi hardware.
- ben509 8y ago
  It seems like you could have a government that was primarily focused on standards and contract enforcement, so companies could build any kind of hardware they liked, but the government would be able to push them to build it according to a broader standard.
jondubois 8y ago
When I read the comment, I thought about companies like Boeing, Airbus, Intel, ARM, Bayer... They sound very capital intensive but I think they could still be more efficient if they were broken up. If you were to analyse these companies, they are already in fact be broken up into hundreds or thousands of small teams. The difference is that these small teams are not separate businesses; they are often not held directly accountable for their work and they do not reap the rewards of their own work (incentive is missing) and so the company has to spend a huge amount of resources to implement checks and balances to make sure that everyone stays in line and this slows everything down to a crawl. Most people who work for big companies are focused on office politics instead of value production. People who work for corporations are subjected to coercion (and managed through fear) on a daily basis under the pretext that it's more efficient in terms of value production... But in reality, corporate coercion is only useful as a mechanism for capturing value, not to produce it. The real goal of corporate structures is to channel existing output value into a small number of shareholder hands but it causes a reduction in the total output value and greatly reduces workers' ability to capture the value that they produce.

coldtea 8y ago

Well, there's an idea that we shouldn't have those things in the first place ("sustained energy production") for environmental reasons, which would go well with distributism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth

matt4077 8y ago

In a certain sense, large companies are a failure of market economies. Because the rules and mechanism of a market are often suspended within the firm. It’s not impossible to imagine something like Tesla being organized as a loose set of specialized craftspeople, although I would agree that it would likely be less efficient.

larsiusprime 8y ago

Mondragon is an example of a large-scale Distributist enterprise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

1123581321 8y ago

One of the accomplishments distributions point to are European cathedrals, which were built by hundreds/thousands of self-employed craftsman who owned their own tools. A modern equivalent would be a company like Google paying thousands of full-time freelancers to bring their own computers and work on large systems together. Or in the case of a Trans-Atlantic cable, paying independent electrical engineers, electricians, boat owners, etc. to work together to lay the cable. Distribution doesn’t rule out forming collectives, corporations or joint ventures to accomplish tasks, either, and a professional might be part of more than one “employer” in this sense.