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Distributism | |
March 27th, 2018 | |
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I've been thinking about politics too much lately, so I thought | |
I'd liven things up by jumping into economics! I'll keep this one | |
short, I promise. | |
I'm no fan of capitalism, especially "free" market economics. It | |
is tantamount to slavery both in its literal abuse of the third | |
world or the consolidation of wealth into the corporate leading to | |
wage-slavery in the first world. The appeal of endless growth is | |
clear, but it's so obviously unsustainable that I can't keep up | |
the lie to myself. Eventually you will run out of peoples to | |
exploit and the workers will have no money to spend. It will | |
consume itself or transform from economic oligarchy into political | |
oligarchy. | |
No, the modern fascination with democracy is mirrored by the lust | |
for wealth that capitalism promises. In reality, the regulation | |
that free-market champions condemn are the very things that have | |
kept us from the brink thus far. The world economy teeters on the | |
edge of absolute ruin and it will be the greedy, get-rich-quick, | |
that take us all there. | |
There are alternatives, and they don't all involve us devolving | |
into an agrestic commune. Distributism [0] is my economic | |
structure of choice. Here's the extremely brief key points: | |
- personal property is a right of the individual | |
- don't assign to higher association what lesser and subordinate | |
organizations can do | |
- small production and local culture is favored over central | |
systems and mass production | |
AKA, keep it small and owned by the workers. | |
The best examples I can give in today's culture are credit unions | |
and farming co-ops. | |
Of course there's a lot more to it, and no system in place today | |
functions in its pure form. We have some elements of distributism | |
in the United States in the form of anti-trust laws. Still, I'd | |
prefer more. | |
Capitalism has no soul, no morality. Distributism shares the | |
morality of the community its attached to. I like that. | |
[0] Distributism on Gopherpedia |