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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