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I am a Distributist, which is a sort of "post-Capitalism" approach that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries largely as a critique of both Capitali

I am a Distributist, which is a sort of "post-Capitalism" approach that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries largely as a critique of both Capitalism and Marxism. I totally agree with the need for a post-Capitalistic view, but we have to be careful to define what Capitalism is and what the alternatives are. Distributism has evolved a lot over the years. There are a lot more non-Catholic distributists these days (I am a Heathen, for example). The definition I like to give is this: Capitalism is the system where people with capital buy land, build facilities, buy tools, and hire labor in order to start businesses. Therefore Capitalism necessarily reduces to ownership of the means of production by the financier. This leads naturally enough to control over production. Since, as Belloc noted in 1914, control over economic production amounts to life itself, Capitalism means that the financial class ends up controlling life for everyone else. This concentration of power is unhealthy. Of course the Marxists think we can solve this problem by taking away that control from the financiers and placing it in the hands of an even fewer number of bureaucrats (something Belloc also pointed out in 1914), and Belloc was mostly right in what he saw as the consequences of that. What we need to understand is that what is necessary is the option of self-employment being open. We have vast amounts of policies from complex tax frameworks (SSTP) to means testing in welfare which prevents this. The Distributist narrative is different: Businesses are built collaboratively by workers working and those with capital financing what is necessary. Workers are the business although financiers should have some interest in things too. The best business is one where the workers and the financiers are on the same team. The ideal businesses are the family businesses. Anyway such a move would require a lot of rethinking our current approaches to economic inequality. The estate tax should be considered harmful because it privileges corporations over unincorporated family businesses. Other tax approaches should be used instead. Our anti-poverty programs are ways to chain the poor to low-paying jobs and a way to subsidize cheap labor, and we should redesign them along different lines. (Interestingly enough, venture-capital-stage startups are more distributist than large corporations because the employees tend to have a larger share of ownership in the business, and a greater level of personal empowerment to change things. The only problem is with exit strategies ;-).)

gametheoretic 13y ago
Q: What was the unemployment rate in 50,000 BC?
- einhverfr 13y ago
  I am not sure that it makes seI am not sure it makes sense to talk about unemployment in the same terms prior to the industrial revolution.
  - gametheoretic 13y ago
    So much of politics is a definitions game. If it's indeed possible to win a political argument by means other than proving your opponent's position internally inconsistent-- i.e., to "prove" yourself correct-- then universal definitions are a must. For example, part of your above argument goes: control of means of production => control of economic production => control of life itself; control of means of production => control of life itself. Ergo, whosoever invented the very first means of production controlled the lives of everyone else in the world. Or, our definitions are incomplete. Or, one or more of the above assertions is fundamentally incorrect regardless of reasonable definition.
    - einhverfr 13y ago
      I don't think that quite works. Here's why. The reason why control over economic production is the control over life itself is that we humans cannot live absent such production. We don't live naked in the trees without tools. Heck we now know even chimpanzees have tools so we can talk about a material culture beyond our species, and the same means this is means of production. But we are more dependent on more complex means of production than chimpanzees are. From what we know of hunter-gatherers, there is no employment so there is no unemployment. Even today we would not say a self-employed individual with no work is unemployed. Until you get to the point where people have currency, you don't have a possibility of a division between worker and employer. Instead you have other sorts of economic arrangements. The Marxist mistake here is to assume no social and economic stratification. There is such from what we know but it is not along employee/employer lines or the like.

gametheoretic 13y ago

Q: What was the unemployment rate in 50,000 BC?

einhverfr 13y ago
I am not sure that it makes seI am not sure it makes sense to talk about unemployment in the same terms prior to the industrial revolution.
- gametheoretic 13y ago
  So much of politics is a definitions game. If it's indeed possible to win a political argument by means other than proving your opponent's position internally inconsistent-- i.e., to "prove" yourself correct-- then universal definitions are a must. For example, part of your above argument goes: control of means of production => control of economic production => control of life itself; control of means of production => control of life itself. Ergo, whosoever invented the very first means of production controlled the lives of everyone else in the world. Or, our definitions are incomplete. Or, one or more of the above assertions is fundamentally incorrect regardless of reasonable definition.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    I don't think that quite works. Here's why. The reason why control over economic production is the control over life itself is that we humans cannot live absent such production. We don't live naked in the trees without tools. Heck we now know even chimpanzees have tools so we can talk about a material culture beyond our species, and the same means this is means of production. But we are more dependent on more complex means of production than chimpanzees are. From what we know of hunter-gatherers, there is no employment so there is no unemployment. Even today we would not say a self-employed individual with no work is unemployed. Until you get to the point where people have currency, you don't have a possibility of a division between worker and employer. Instead you have other sorts of economic arrangements. The Marxist mistake here is to assume no social and economic stratification. There is such from what we know but it is not along employee/employer lines or the like.