The Virtue of the Distributist

[Guest Aluigi]

The guy who owns a gigantic business now has to comply with the new proximity ownership laws. When the government ordered Microsoft to split, was it stealing from Bill Gates? no. it was enacting federal anti-trust laws. So, pass the distributist legislation, and order companies to split. No one is being stolen from.

Illegalize dog-in-the-manger squatting (which has always been considered immoral anyway) and then order the companies to dissolve. The guy that used to own the wide-spanning company using it for his wealth now owns one company.

This was something that was outlawed in Christendom and is allowed today. Simply outlaw it again, while you're outlawing abortion and demolishing planned parenthood you can outlaw ditm-squatting and split big businesses.

[quote][b]"Dog-in-the-manger"' Squatting
[/b]the denial of a limited resource (usually by legal claim) without real intention of personal use, but with the intention of gaining immoral wealth by holding out until the one who needs it is desperate.' [/quote]

That's what big business owners basically do with the means of production and ownership of businesses. They own the means of production without real intention of PERSONAL use and wait until the people of lower classes are desperate enough that they sell their time and energy to the corporation, their very selves.

It's an immoral practice, and the fact that the people practicing it are suddenly not allowed to practice it doesn't concern me in the least.

dairygirl, if you advocate socialism then I'd say go to my "the sin of the socialist" thread. otherwise, consider distributism! Capitalism does allow for either good or evil to occur, and in that sense it promotes indifference.

Edited January 28, 2005 by Aluigi

[dairygirl4u2c]

i apologize for not reading this thread very closely. i assumed it was a capitalist versus socialist debate. i despise pure socialism perhaps more than pure capitalism. that's why in my world, socialism is only the small segment stopping the big.

i think i might agree with distributionism. sorry for the confusion.

[MichaelFilo]

Before I start attacking the primary comments (and by attack I do mean in the strictly take and give of debate), I'd like to say, why isn't socartes on here, he's one who'd whole heartedly disagree that economics somewhow affect morality, at least he did with me.
However, indifference isn't equal to being able to do bad or good, because in all reality, even a crucifix can be used for good or bad. Nothing is wholly pure that is material, only the immaterial God is wholly good. So everything has a capacity for both good and bad.
Having an economic system, whatever it may be may do good or bad. This isn't immoral or indifferent, this is secular freedom. Essentially, secular freedoim is like our free will since it can do both good and bad. Christian freedom is freedom of the soul, and can only do good. Either way, thats off topic.

Splitting companies is something that happened because of regulations of monopolies and such, and those rules were already there. That is, if a government hasn't instilled these rules prior to, they'd be wrong. By promoting distributalism you'd actually be promoting an economic form that the government had NO intention to instill, the lawas didn't support, and the whole country promoted a different one. It would be wrong.


Now, as far as distributalism, I have come to love it because of you. It is the moral solution to this very immoral economic state we are in.

God bless,
Mikey

[dairygirl4u2c]

acutally i love distributionism!! it's what i've been thinking all this time only spelled out better. catholics always talk about how people have property rights etc. to justify capitalism.

i say now is the time for the notion of imperative property rights for capitalism to develop into the notion of imperative pr's for distributionism.

[Guest Aluigi]

... See, Catholicism has a lot to offer

Anyway, Mich, I'm not advocating going in and randomly dividing companies. I'm saying if distributists were elected and made proximity ownership laws et cetera, then the companies would be ordered to split. When anti-monopolies laws were first created, they were used against companies that had legally become monopolies. The same thing would happen here.

[Guest Aluigi]

Don't let this discussion die

[Justified Saint]

Anyone ever read some of the Shaw/Chesterton debates on socialism and distributism?

[Guest Aluigi]

no but that would be very very interesting! They online anywhere? or at least for sale online? (I already got everything Barnes n Noble would give me by Chesterton and Belloc)

[Justified Saint]

[url="http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/debate.txt"]http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/debate.txt[/url]

A debate titled "Do We Agree?" with Hilaire Belloc as the moderator.

A very interesting debate where Chesterton refutes the socialist implications Shaw tries to read into distributism. Filled with typical Chestertonian wit and humor.

This debate along with another one on the same topic (I believe) is printed in one of the volumes of the Collected Works of Chesterton: [i]Chesterton on Shaw[/i]

Edited January 31, 2005 by Justified Saint