Posted on 10/18/2011 8:36:07 PM PDT by MeNeFrego
NEW YORK — Can an Anglican theologian from Britain revive an 80-year-old Catholic social justice theory and provide a solution to America’s economic woes and political polarization?
Philosopher and political thinker Phillip Blond thinks so, and he’s giving it everything he’s got.
Blond, who has been a counselor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, just wrapped up a two-week U.S. tour to pitch his retooled version of “distributism,” a theory that argues that both capitalism and government are out of control.
In that sense, the thinking goes, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are right...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
No One will take your stuff that you earned morally ,you just won't be allowed to have power to accumulate wealth through things like evil usury to take anyone else stuff
Non sequitor.
Who would be the arbitor of moral? You? The Pope? Obama?
Thinking of yourself?
Answer the question with a simple yes or no?
Do you approve of abortion?
No, I was thinking of you and everyone else who is a distributist.
“”Who would be the arbitor of moral?””
You could start with upholding the 10 commandments and enforce them which would reduce pornography, greed , abortion, homosexuality etc.. all of these things are false liberty
Do you believe a US citizen should be allowed to accumulate wealth through publishing pornography and this is what freedom really means?
The alternative to "capitalism" being what exactly? Some sort of collective authoritarianism, no doubt.
Well, this guy is half right, at least. Government certainly is out of control.
In truth, as most of us know, capitalism is not really being practiced in the USA, at least at the level of big business. So for that reason alone, branding capitalism as the boogeyman in the first place is rather misguided, since it's not the actual enemy.
What is out of control (besides government, of course) is corporatism (crony capitalism) whose benefactors, predictably, capitalize on their influence over an ever-expanding government, with its associated spending.
That's why people like Sarah Palin and her ilk who speak out against this real enemy are so important and influential in these times.
Let's all find a solution to the real problem, and not chase misnamed phantoms, whose pursuers invariably offer some flavor of Marxism as their "solution."
Distributism is love for fellow man and neighbor,it’s a better solution to anti greed-this is a path towards real Liberty
I submit that we have simply not seen capitalism in America for about 100 years, and therefore that central thesis of distributism, in the context of the last century or so, does not describe the American economic system.
Replace capitalism with "crony capitalism" or "corporatism," and the thesis starts to make much more sense to me.
Classical free enterprise (capitalism) is a phony enemy as far as this "distributism" is concerned.
Or am I mixing "free enterprise" with "capitalism"? Do they mean the same thing? I'm not an economic theorist, but I'd like to know the difference, if there is any.
Beyond that, any free market, voluntary solutions to our current situation are, of course, welcome.
That might be true, but much of the intellectual firepower of the conservative movement is also from Catholic minds, and many conservatives, once they examine the foundations of their political and social principles, convert to Catholicism.
I think I agree with you in that it would be inaccurate to describe our current economic system as capitalism.
And much of what I’ve seen here suggested by distributists isn’t incompatible with free markets.
The only thing I really do see incompatible is the objection to “usury.”
“explains why most catholics i meet are leftists.”
Please allow me to chalk one up on the other side of the tally sheet.
Matter of fact, I don’t think it is possible to be both a Catholic and a leftist. The two are totally incompatible.
Just calling yourself a Catholic doesn’t mean that you believe as the Church does or try to act as Jesus taught.
Just as a disclaimer, I will add that just trying to act as Jesus taught doesn’t mean you’re doing a very good job of it.
Could you point me to where Chesterton supported distributionism?
Great note on distributism and very informative.
I wonder, though, if everyone who uses the term knows what it means?
“What specific regulations or laws would you implement or eliminate that would achieve the distributionist goals?”
Regulations are the problem. Capitalism is the way people naturally act when no one has a gun to their heads (exceptions stipulated).
If the regulations were taken out of the way, people would naturally drift toward that way of doing business without any government coercion.
Belloc saw Capitalism to it’s logical end like we are starting to see today when he said...
“It is a necessary inference that there will be under capitalism a conscious, direct, and planned exploitation of majority (the free citizens who do not own) by the minority who are owners...If you left men completely free under a capitalist system, there would be so heavy a mortality from starvation as would dry up the sources of labor in a very short time.” —Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State, Section 5
Capitalism’s logical end is socialism,communism etc...
In The Outline of Sanity,1926.
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