For at least the last 100 or so years Western powers seem to rotate between capitalism, and socialism. In the United States we usually grab hold of parts of either system to form the Frankenstein beast that we now call the American economy. I have been reading more and more about the economic theory of distributism which finds as it’s champions mostly traditionalist Roman Catholics. Well as a recovering socialist myself I have to admit that the more I read about distributism the more I think we have something that could potentially work, the idea as I understand it is to essentially grant the workers the right to own the means by which they produce goods and to help distribute property to the people, as individuals. This way we take out the Government ownership of property (Socialism) and the Banks ownership of property (Capitalism) and instead allow the people themselves to own property. I found the article below by Bill Powell to be an interesting primer to distributist thought and I thought others might enjoy it as well.
Capitalist? Socialist? Distributist.
by Bill Powell
insidecatholic.com
Small is beautiful. Or, the bigger the business, the bigger the bailout.
Congress has promised over $1 trillion from our hands to “rescue” gargantuan businesses. When corporations demand the largest free ride in our history, it’s time to rethink economies of scale. Socialism is a silly solution — there, everything becomes one gargantuan business. We need a real solution: distributism.
As G. K. Chesterton wrote, “the cure for centralization is decentralization. It has been described as a paradox.” In contrast to both socialism and capitalism, distributism aims for a wide distribution of private property. G. K.’s brother Cecil explained:
[A Socialist] desires the means of production to be the property of the community and to be administered by its political officers. A Distributist . . . desires that they should, generally speaking, remain private property, but that their ownership should be so distributed that the determining mass of families — ideally every family — should have an efficient share therein. That is Distributism, and nothing else is Distributism.
Capitalism and socialism are theoretically enemies, but for the ordinary citizen, their results are remarkably similar: little or no power. In socialism, power centers in the few who happen to run the government. In capitalism, power gathers in the few who happen to run the largest corporations. They promptly turn socialist — for themselves. Corporate welfare is far older than the recent bailouts; Wal-Mart alone has bagged over $1.2 billion in public funds……(more)……
