← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Buster
Thread ID: 13850 | Posts: 12 | Started: 2004-05-23
2004-05-23 21:46 | User Profile
I've never respected Michael Moore, but he has a point that the French deserve an apology. They were vindicated. Think Bill O'Reilly will offer one? Think he'll say he's sorry for calling the Pope naive? Think he's man enough?
When pigs fly.
2004-05-23 21:55 | User Profile
I put MM in the category of filthy scum that occasonally says something useful. Just like Bill Buckley.
2004-05-24 10:47 | User Profile
Even a gravy-sweating stopped clock wearing a greasy baseball cap is right twice a day.
2004-05-24 10:58 | User Profile
I always thought the MM's heart was in the right place. He hates the big corporations, which is a healthy sign right there.
His problem is that he bought into the whole PeeCee lie about race not being important, and so he constantly makes errors such as, for example, guns are the problem instead of the Shandels and Hectors who wield them.
Or that we need to somehow reform the corporate system instead of dumping it altogether.
Also, I take it that he's an Irish Catholic by birth, but he apparently hasn't even bothered to check out Distributism, which speaks ill of both his education and his intellectual curiosity.
If he'd lose the lies about race not being important, I think he'd find the rest of the Third Position program right up his alley.
He'd be a helluva catch for our side, although clearly there's not much of a chance of that happening.
Walter
2004-05-24 18:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I'm sure O'Reilly and his FReeper fans are still busy gloating and laughing over the airport tunnel collapse that killed several people in France.[/QUOTE] You ain't just whistling Dixie: [url]http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1140746/posts[/url]
"DeGaulle airport should be renameed 'We Surrender' Airport."
Somebody slap these people.
2004-05-25 14:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]His problem is that he bought into the whole PeeCee lie about race not being important, and so he constantly makes errors such as, for example, guns are the problem instead of the Shandels and Hectors who wield them.
Or that we need to somehow reform the corporate system instead of dumping it altogether. [/QUOTE]
To veer off the subject somewhat, distributism is about dumping the corporate system? I thought the idea was to incorporate labor along with capital, via a modernized guild system. My understanding of Chesterton is that he favored limiting size of companies, but not going away with the corporate vehicle altogether.
2004-05-25 15:03 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Buster]To veer off the subject somewhat, distributism is about dumping the corporate system? I thought the idea was to incorporate labor along with capital, via a modernized guild system. My understanding of Chesterton is that he favored limiting size of companies, but not going away with the corporate vehicle altogether.[/QUOTE] Buster, I wouldn't say that Distributism is "about" dumping the corporate system, although that could be one aspect of a Distributist program. The main idea of Distributism is that, as much as possible, labor and capital should be one and the same. In simpler terms, that small shops, farms, and craftsmen would be the rule. Chesterton did realize that not every single thing could be accomplished on such a small scale, so he encouraged the idea of guilds or co-ops, in which the membership would share the cost and use of such things as expensive machinery or equipment. Some things (pharmaceutical research, perhaps?) might still not be practical as a guild or co-op, so there could be exceptions to the "small shop" rule. However, they would be just that -- exceptions. This is why I say that Distributism does not demand dumping the corporate model altogether. It does, however, strongly discourage it, because it goes against the "labor & capital as one" idea. A corporation, by its very nature, has legally severed the relationship between those who own the business, those who run the business, and those who are liable for the business's activities. So, the corporate form could have a place in a Distributist economy, but it would be a small place indeed. And yes, you are correct that Chesterton advocated limiting the size of companies. He held one of the aspects of capitalism to be a tendency to monopoly, which I think is borne out by observation (AOL Time Warner, anyone?) The free market requires competition to thrive, and monopoly kills competition. Because capitalism naturally leads to monopoly, and monopoly kills competition, and competition is necessary for the free market to thrive, therefore capitalism eventually destroys the free market.
2004-05-25 15:07 | User Profile
I also think it is germane to point out that capitalism is NOT conservative. The free market, comprised of small property owners, who all recognize certain moral limits on what they can do with their property, IS conservative. Capitalism is a relatively modern notion that worships efficiency, separates capital from labor, and pronounces anything that is the result of commerce as good. It is a profoundly anti-conservative system, and it destroys all that goes before it in the name of economic progress.
2004-05-25 15:34 | User Profile
We had this discussion the month before you joined:
[url]http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=12726&highlight=distributism[/url]
2004-05-25 15:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE]A corporation, by its very nature, has legally severed the relationship between those who own the business, those who run the business, and those who are liable for the business's activities. So, the corporate form could have a place in a Distributist economy, but it would be a small place indeed.[/QUOTE]
Great comments.
First let me make the caveat that I in no way speak for anybody but myself - I wouldn't want to give the esteemed Buster or anybody else the impression that I'm somehow speaking for all Distributists.
As to your comment copied above, I think that the more direct conclusion that the corporate organizational form "legally severed the relationship between those who own the business, those who run the business" is that it destroys private property as it was always understood to be.
The social institution that we call "private property" is a UNITY of ownership, management/control and liability. All the great benefits of this institution flow from the fact that things are owned and controlled by a single person, and in addition that the owner/manager is answerable to society for all his debts up to the value of all his property.
The corporate form destroys that unity by (1) separating ownership from management, and (2) limiting liability to the amount of property held under the charter.
Now, I think that the problem is not so pronounced in close corporations and LLCs where the owners are also the workers/managers as in the small family business context because the UNITY that is private property is there de facto even if it doesn't exist de jure. Maybe small companies could be tolerated (but I don't even like that much). But certainly big corporations should generally not be.
It's like pulling taffy - as the corporation gets bigger its nexus to the owners progessively weakens, until the ties are severed altogether. Certainly in a large publicly traded company where millions of anonymous stockholders buy and sell stock on the big exchanges like gamblers placing bets in a casino and whose equity interest in the company is so atomized so as to have positive economic disincentives in taking any interest in the management of the company's real assets, thereby leaving their practical disposition to an entrenched management elite.
All of the vast assets of Disney, for example, belong to Eisner and his entrenched cronies in any practical meaning of the word. Unimaginably large swaths of our economy have in this way passed from the hands of our people to the hands of you-know-who.
Thus, by separating ownership from management/control and liability for debts and torts, the corporate organizational form DESTROYS PRIVATE PROPERTY, for in view of the above "corporate property" is an oxymoron.
Distributism, as far as I understand it, seeks to re-institute private property, which has been badly damaged by the vast overuse of the corporate organizational form (I say overuse, b/c I agree that there may be some enterprises that are just by their nature so public that they can't be private - consider the railway system of the TVA. But even then, I'm open to arguments to the contrary). I should add that other body blows have been dealt to the institution of private property, including especially the drug seizure laws, the erosion of the Fourth and Fifth amendements (also largely due to the stupidity of our drug laws). State encouragement of consumer debt has wiped out unimaginably large amounts of home equity in the past several years alone. The list could go on. But the corporate form is to my mind the most direct threat to private property that we have going, and we're going to have to address it if we hope to win this fight.
So, in response to Buster's question, I think that scrapping the system of large publicly traded companies is essential to our survival. I would literally end the corporate system as it now exists.
I would really like to discuss this in depth with all here, because I sincerely believe that this is the key to at least half our appeal.
Walter
2004-05-25 17:45 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]The question is, how does one keep "mom and pop free enterprise" from evolving into plutocratic capitalism? In the absence of anti-trust laws and the like (which would be the case in a true free market system), there would be a natural tendency of certain small property owners to eventually become large property owners, and, for the sake of efficiency and profit, absentee owners and speculators. You cannot have the benefits of unregulated "free market" without these long-term costs, because the former is simply an earlier stage of the latter.
You may argue that to a large part this is due to one's mindset, you speak of "certain moral limits" as to what can be done with property. What if you have individuals who do not share this mindset, who (like many) put profiteering ahead of all else? How would a "free market" restrain such individuals from abusing their economic power?[/QUOTE] AY, All excellent questions, indeed, and they mostly spring from a difference in definitions. When I, and most Distributists, use the phrase "free market", we are referring to a system of private property and (limited) competition, as it was traditionally practiced in Christian Europe until the Enlightenment. This is not the same as laissez faire capitalism, in which no limits of any kind are allowed. As I stated before, I think that capitalism eventually destroys the free market, so Distributism allows for some state controls over the use of property, such as limits on acquisitions, total property owned, and advertising. I do not share the faux-sophisticated naivete of the anarcho-capitalists, who claim that if only every single person could do absolutely whatever they wanted with all their property at any given moment while not considering the consequences, that everything would magically work out for the best. The Distributist model recognized that greed and speculation will always be attempting to subvert the system of widespread property ownership, so it prescribes an active state policy of always favoring the smaller concern.
2004-05-25 19:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Buster]We had this discussion the month before you joined:
[url="http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=12726&highlight=distributism"]http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=12726&highlight=distributism[/url][/QUOTE] Buster, thanks for pointing that out. That thread has some good resources.