Talk:Distributism/Archive 1

Archive 1

War Section

I made some slight edits to the passage on the Catholic Worker Movement. Partially to try and remove POV, but also because it read strange to me initially.Zerobot 03:18, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

John of Paris

This highly unlikely incident is nowhere mentioned online outside Wikipedia and its mirrors, so I'm moving it here: While the papal encyclicals were a starting point, Belloc and Chesterton based much of their suggestions of what to change today by analyzing what worked in medieval times before the development of what they considered the capitalist philosophy as first articulated by Jean Quidort (d. 1306) in the theory of homo economicus in De potestate regia et papali.. --Flammingo^Hey 15:19, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Give this article some substance

More headings should be created for this article. I propose to create a "history of distributism" heading and another heading for the actual nuts and bolts "theory of distributism". More headings could be created such as "practical distributism", "distributism and politics-geopoltics", and "Influence" ie. Antigonish movement ect. Also the heading of the comprehensive ideological ground of influences that gave rise to distributist thought should be analyzed, maybe the "origin of the idea" ect. I am just throwing these out there. I will definitely soon add some more headings to maybe just to inspire through simple controversy others to work at fleshing out this important article in wikipedia that has been neglected.

Yahoo Distributist Group????!!! Where are you guys and gals?

CLAVIO August 1, 2005

In Response to Myself

I just added quite an army of headings with starters ect., which i will continue to expand on. So don't just delete a heading in which you feel there is only one sentence underneath it, and that is your only reason. Hopefully this will spur more interest in the article, rather than to simply attract someone who likes to "delete things". I want people to "add their own ideas" that pop into their head no matter what. The article must be improved upon and not merely pruned. I am also thinking about creating two more headings one being a heading near the end called "Controversy-Criticism" in which we look at the controversy that distributism creates among Catholics who don't agree with it, the founders of distributism (ie. the recent TIA reaction to Eric Gill), or certain controversial groups around the world that happen to also claim they advocate distributism.

CLAVIO August 1, 2005

---

The second paragraph is a critique, which does not belong, at least in such a prominent position, in an encyclopedia-article. I take issue with that paragraph's claim that distributism "has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidarity and solidarity (these being built into financially independent local (sic) co-operatives)." Distributism has, in fact, been successfully neutralised by some of its natural followers' being sidetracked into (actually capitalist) co-ops and hippy communes. As its name implies, distributism is about the equable sharing of the means of production, not a quaint, sentimental, eco-friendly agrarianism. Distributism isn't about subsistence-farming but about making individuals and families as independent as possible in terms of providing for themselves. While it's true that ownership of land is important in such a system, the central tenet is that the world's productive wealth must be parcelled out fairly. That is distributism's political priority. It's true that that will enrage many vested interests, but this doesn't invalidate the theory. Further, if distributism were properly explained, most people would want it.

Creating headings doesn't make an article. It just makes it look sparse and eccentric. Content should precede headings. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.238.27 (talk) 15:52, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

contested statements removed

• The advocacy of distributism by certain ultranationalist groups is more pronounced in continental Europe where distributism is seen as reflecting the values of an "old order" and a return to the "nationalistic roots" of a country. {{Fact|date=December 2006}}
• Although the non-secular Catholic Corporatists fit better into the Distributist mindset, they are largely overlooked by the critics of corporatism who accuse it of being a primarily fascist component. {{Fact|date=December 2006}}

Please do not restore this information to the article without a citation.--BirgitteSB 15:46, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Social Theory

The social theory > social security section seems to have some POV about distributism. 128.113.137.111 01:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

---

"Most people would want to continue earning it in the usual way, but those not so working would be expected by their local community to be doing a sufficient share of other necessary or worthwhile work: child-rearing, education, artistic creation, appropriate recreation etc., or voluntary work in the community or natural environment. Business would no longer be for monetary profit, but to create real benefits for the community."

How would you measure a "sufficient share"? Measuring hours doesn't seem to work as people can slack off in eight hours or do a lot. Money seems to be the traditional "value" of time and effort, so what other method is there to measure someone's community service or family service?

---

OK, being an armchair revolutionary has appealed to me in my youth and I believe men have been enjoined to have visions and dream dreams. But, it seems to me, that is the easy and the fun part; now with this topic we come to the hard part.

Is it right? Is it necessary? How can it possibly be brought to fruition?

First things first.

Could an advocate or defender of Distributism please attempt to justify or even explain their assumption that the ownership of the means of production should automatically or naturally reside with the producer. What makes it automatically wrong, unjust, unfair or unloving that others have something to say about what is done with and on, what is produced and what profits are generated from a parcel of land.

There is certainly not enough arable land to go around - 6 billion people would (conservatively) make about one billion people requiring land to use to produce food, clothing and building materials and raw materials for other less essential manufacture like spices or medications. Who decides who has the right to be the primary producer? How is the land allocated?

Rocky ---

Although a society of all sustenance farmers who own their land would be distributism, thats just one example. The main essence of distributism is everyone being their own boss, owning their own means of production. This means fully owning it, not just owning shares in a corporation. This is primarily for moral and quality of life reasons, not because it would cause GDP to grow faster or that it would advance the state of technology faster. In distributism the law and guilds would prevent people from trying to control more and more land or destroy other businesses. Distributism would work with barter or the moral law of just price, which in and of itself it is never permissible to charge anything for more then its worth.

The ownership of the means of production allows freedom. In the Catholic morality of Belloc, this wasn't necessarily good in and of itself, and wage labor could be good especially if both employer and employee were good catholics. But the problem is that this makes the employee dependant on the employer, which can heavily effect the areas of morality and religion. If the employer demands things like working on sunday, this can cause problems.

The view of Catholics like Belloc is that division of labor should not occour if the resulting job is sub-human or robotic, even though that overall it makes GDP and technology advance more slowly. Catholics had no desire for a techno-utopia, it was supremely more important that everyone could be in a wholesome and holy environment as possible. In fact, a techno-uptopia would be a very bad environment for catholics as it would tempt them to believe they didn't need god.

Finally, most of this could be done at the grassroutes level, by organizing communities like the Amish. But certain things like a property tax are antithetical to the system however and would need to be challenged federally.

---

The software developer making his living with his own computer may still have to rent his home or buy it with a loan. I think d'ism involves sufficient independence so that we don't need to rent or buy our home, but we just own it and the land around it. D'ism abolishes various unproductive professions such as investment-banker, manager, landlord, civil servant and professional politician. It also significantly diminishes the number of people involved in real estate trading, the law (as in lawyers), mercantilism and so-called service industries. There would be no agencies for advertising or public relations, let alone market-research. There would be generally less transport because there would be no wage-slaves and, because people owned a stake in their country, there would be less restless tourism and, ideally, no economic migration.

Another point: some d'ists make the mistake of thinking that the movement is to do with setting up communes. It's actually about the transformation of whole societies.

www.danon.co.uk

---

I agree that distributism does not have to be just agrarian, but the western lean towards rugged individualism tends to bring this to mind. Yes, one vision would be for families to be as close to self-sufficient as possible, but there is still a HIGH degree of cooperation.

One recent update to the distrbutist vision is the free flow of knowledge and training that can come from the Internet combined with the ever decreasing cost of highly capable fabrication facilities. MIT’s efforts towards developing the fab lab are one example. With open source software, open source CAD/CAM designs, and free training, this brings huge new possibilities to the individual and/or community level. For less than $100,000 dollars, a community can put together a facility that can build (given enough time and materials) almost any consumer product.

Also, keep in mind that distributism is more about the value and dignity of the person/worker/family than it is about the economy versus the capitalism and socialism focus on the production and distribution of goods. It is about creating a society of cooperative artisans who form a local community that meets the needs of all the local citizens. It would be hard if not impossible to become billionaire rich in a distributist society. Prices would be higher, but so would the quality of products and the purchasing power of the workers. By definition, the wealth stays at the worker level since everything is done with small business.

It is my opinion that you have to step back and look at the moral and philosophical elements of the dignity of man, the place work places in that dignity, and the concept of a family wage. Since much of the support for distributism comes from the Catholic Church, the writings from the Catholic Church on these matters are a good starting point – Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Mater et Magistra, Centesimus Annus, and Laborum Exercens.

---

I changed the bit about the ownership of the means of production to more accurately reflect the kind of socialism described: state or indirect socialism is not the be-all, end-all of socialist economics, but actually falls short of Marx's ideal for a Communist society. After all, in Marxist theory, is it not the workers themselves, not the government, that should be the means-of-production holders?

That being said, should the use of the blanket term "capitalism" be replaced with anything?

Zedweiller —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zedweiller (talk • contribs) 12:03, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Removal of External Links Section

I personally thought that the external links section of the article had been pretty well vetted to fit in with the Wikipedia External Links style guidelines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links

If anyone has some objections that they *don't* fit those guidelines, then by all means we'll remove them. But since they were completely removed without any discussion, I think they ought to be added back in unless there's some compelling reason to take them out, like failure to conform to the style guidelines.

Dgoodmaniii (talk) 17:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

• I removed them because they mostly fit into the category of WP:LINKSTOAVOID. I'm opposed to their bulk reintroduction but I won't revert it per WP:BRD. Protonk (talk) 17:15, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

• Hmm. Which in particular did you think they violated? I don't see any that seem to fit them.

Dgoodmaniii (talk) 16:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• Well, mostly categories 1, 2, and 11. A lot of single issue websites as well as blogspot, geocities, freeshell, etc. I don't own this article, so editors who feel that certain links are appropriate (like the web page of university profs. or others) can be reintroduced one by one. I would prefer that the bulk of them not be replaced. Protonk (talk) 16:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

• Hmm again.

Category 1: I think most of these links contained information that would not be contained in the article if it became featured. Obviously, there's some prudential judgment here, but I think the burden is on the remover when they've been present without challenge for so long.

Category 2: Once again, I don't know of any of those links which provided false information or utilized false research. Again, too, I think the burden's on the remover when the links have been present for so long without objection.

Category 11: Blogs and personal webpages? Just because the domain says "blogspot" doesn't mean that it's a blog; it just means that it's got a blog format. A site like distributist.blogspot.com isn't a blog; it's not a personal website, but an enormous collection of third-party writings which would be extremely interesting to someone wanting further information about distributism. Didn't see any geocities links, though once again, having "geocities" in the domain doesn't mean it's personal or a blog. Ditto for freeshell.

I'd be in favor of vetting these links; but I still maintain that their bulk removal was premature. Does anyone else have any comments? Dgoodmaniii (talk) 15:13, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

I think the links are rather excellent and should remain. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.1.106.178 (talk) 00:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Solidarity

I think that link solidarity does not correspond with polish union Solidarity and should be removed.--93.136.136.142 (talk) 13:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

Ultranationalist Groups

This citation is better, but still leaves too much to chance. Is the named individual representative of national anarchism? And this link still strikes me as inappropriate. Isn't there a link which provides a little more substance regarding his commitment to distributism rather than a long explanation of why he rejected Catholicism, the role of Russia in the new Eurasia, etc.?

Dgoodmaniii 15:05, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The "ultranationalist" section was seriously NPOV. This is not a soapbox, it's an encyclopaedia. We strive for neutrality, objectivity, and facts; not putrid, irrational, hate-filled ranting and anti-BNP prejudice and bigotry by immature politicasters.

You have to treat the manifestos of all legal parties equally, and cite them as your sources of information, so that everyone can check the information for themselves and form their own opinion. Tossing around extremist invective against legitimate parties is unacceptable on Wikipaedia.

87.112.24.145 (talk) 01:20, 6 December 2007 (UTC)Promsan

This section's bothered me for a while, actually. Why "ultranationalist" rather than "nationalist"? What's the difference? I'm not saying there isn't one, just that we don't know why. Which "ultranationalist" groups are we talking about? Just the BNP? Then why the plural?

"The advocacy of distributism by certain ultranationalist groups is more pronounced in continental Europe where distributism is seen as reflecting the values of an "old order" and a return to the "nationalistic roots" of a country." "Is seen" by whom? "Citation needed" is something I see as for generally accepted facts that don't necessarily have a particular source yet, not for mere assertions of any type.

I think somebody ought to really clean this section out. It shouldn't be me; my interest in distributism has nothing to do with nationalism, ultra or otherwise. But I think those in favor of this section needed to find some justification for it. E.g., when citing a party's support for an idea, it's probably good to cite the party's platform, rather than just an individual party member, even if high-ranking.

Dgoodmaniii (talk) 13:34, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

This entire section seems to be written with the sole purpose of slandering the BNP. In my opinion with the statement about how Some "ultra" nationalist groups had pejoratively "appropriated" distributism, the author of this section betrays his bias and intent. (prey tell how does one "appropriate" an idea?? Does the writer suggest that the BNP and Nick Griffin somehow rewrote the history books to suggest that they rather than Billoc invented the concept??)In fact many people including the large percentage of the people of the Nation of Costa Rica have adopted the concept. So why the emphasis on the BNP. If one is either to write or mention support or opposition to the concept, then one should list the various people in support and their supplemental arguments, and the same for the people and groups in opposition. And if one strives not to be biased then one should be as broad as possible in reporting on the support and opposition.

All of the arguments in this comments section are valid have been here for years and are not refuted, so why is this section of an otherwise good entry not altered by Wikis editors?? IMHO this shows the weakness of wiki, where politicasters and others whose bias leads them to deliberately distort objectivity need to be stopped from continually inserting their propoganda. Once an Article is written and has been on the site long enough to draw sufficient commentary, an editorial committee needs to clean it up and lock out further alterations to the main section. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.200.138.253 (talk) 18:32, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Am I the only one who notices that this is the exact opposite of what is being said above about the BNP criticizing distribtism?

Another influence?

I suspect that Distributism may have influenced Mortimer Adler, specifically his book The Capitalist Manifesto, cowritten with Louis Kelso (Random House, 1958), which espouses a similar theory. But as far as I know, neither Adler nor any academic has mentioned a possible influence. Can anyone confirm or deny? Grommel (talk) 20:45, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Humanist Society of New South Wales

The consensus at WP:RSN is that this source is not reliable or notable. It should not be used to reference claims in this article. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 18:56, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Although the opinion of two people is hardly a shinning example of “consensus”, I'll look for a better source that says the same thing. However, since the majority of the content of the article is not sourced, it would be prejudicial of you to delete the unsourced content you don't like while keeping the unsourced content that you like... --Loremaster (talk) 19:02, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Pardon me? That comment makes no sense. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 19:25, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Ooops! I made a mistake in my previous reply that I've now corrected. What I meant to say was that the article is full of content that is not sourced or badly sourced. On what basis do you reject some unsourced/badly sourced content and keep some unsourced/badly sourced content? --Loremaster (talk) 19:27, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Tag

This article is tagged as "too technical". It doesn't strike me as such. On the contrary, I found it to be quite interesting and informative. Does a majority of editors feel that this tag is appropriate? Joefromrandb (talk) 08:49, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is too technical so I'll remove the tag. If someone restores it he or she will have to explain exactly why he or she thinks it is too technical and offer suggestions to overcome this problem. --Loremaster (talk) 20:59, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

informative and basically good but sometimes hard to understand

The section on Political Parties has this sentence:

There are some modern political parties in the United Kingdom which espouse distributist views such as the British National Party and the National Front although the former chairman of the BNP, John Tyndall criticised Distributism in favour of Corporativism for the fact that the owner of a heavy industry who keeps the capital within the country should not be forced to work and that the owners of the industry should be able to decide for themselves in relation to grant shares to the workforce albeit the case that workers of industry may even suffer the risk of share losses if having been given share ownership.

This sentence is incomprehensible, but it seems necessary to understand it to understand the conclusion, which follows. This is just one example of the many sentences or sections that are full of information but not as clear to the reader as perhaps they are to the author. I encourage the author, or someone who knows the subject equally well, to edit, not for content or mistakes, but simpler sentences. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 12:31, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Meaningless graph in Structure of Distributed Economies

In the Structure of Distributed Economies section there's a diagram that somehow represents different structural features of economies.

What economic relationship between what entities that diagram tries to show? What is being modelled, and how the modelled reality of acting humans maps to the graph-theoretic world of edges and vertices?

I think that Wikipedia can do better than worthless diagrams that can be found in toothpaste commercials. The dots on the right promote regional innovation, whereas the dots on the left do not? What does it mean? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.107.215.17 (talk) 17:38, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

No explanation of the bias against same sex marriage/families

The article goes out of it's way to specify that a family according to distributism consists of a heterosexual couple, implying that distributism has an inherent anti gay stance. Is this true? If so it should be called out somewhere in the article. If not true, then the definition of a family should be changed to "parents and children" or something equally gender neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.63.248.32 (talk) 23:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the link to familialism is what goes out of its way to imply, in this case to imply that distributism is inherently patriarchal and anti-gay. In terms of this article itself, it is an interesting theoretical question to see if modern proponents could incorporate libertarianism into distributism. I think the foundational problem for you is that the focus of distributism is on production; the ownership of productive property, by a productive family. Distributism would presumably not be opposed to other forms of relationship, but needs to be based on the idea of a productive relationship, one which produces and raises new life. It is not inherently anti-gay (pace whoever put the link in for the very unneutral 'familialism' article), but is inherently pro-heterosexual generative family. --Richardson mcphillips (talk) 12:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The lack of neutrality of the Familialism article doesn't mean that the use of the term “familialism” is pejorative. --Loremaster (talk) 19:37, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the link to the Familialism article and I've temporarily changed the definition of a nuclear family to "two parents" until we find statements on this issue by reliable sources. --Loremaster (talk) 12:06, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Source for: “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”

(Sorry, I just made this edit and forgot to include an edit summary.)

I could not find the quote, “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” anywhere in the The Use of Diversity essay collection (even though that was cited as its source -- both in this article and everywhere else I could find the quotation on the Web). I did find the quote in the 1920 pamphlet, The Superstition of Divorce. So I've corrected the reference.

Text of The Uses of Diversity: http://books.google.com/books?id=7c68MXMvQdgC&lpg=PP1&dq=the%20uses%20of%20diversity&pg=PP11#v=onepage&q&f=false

Text of The Superstition of Divorce: http://books.google.com/books?id=HqcoAAAAYAAJ&dq=superstition%20of%20divorce&pg=PP7#v=onepage&q&f=false

The first revision of this article to include the quote in question: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Distributism&oldid=24203757

--CristoperB (talk) 19:00, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

CCC

I think this http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P8A.HTM Should be worked in here somewhere. 24.191.87.42 (talk) 19:09, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Distributism today

It could be really informative to have something on distributism today. Who are its proponents, how have they adapted and developed the theory, are they all Catholics etc.? Are there any political parties/movements? Since the ideology is hardly known today, such information would be important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.100.44.83 (talk) 11:30, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

As I understand the term "distributism", I would say that the Rev. Sun Myung Moon is a distributist. With people of parental heart voluntarily distributing their accumulated wealth to the less fortunate - while retaining ownership and control of harmoniously cooperating business enterprises, the Kingdom of Heaven would not be a theocracy but a kind of "God-centered socialism".

I don't see how. Sun Myung Moon is anti-communist and anti-materialist, but that doesn't make him a distributist. Distributism is not a "God-centred socialism" but a belief that productive property out to be distributed and that neither the state nor individuals should be able to amass and control this property (socialism and capitalism). (Collincentre (talk) 08:24, 14 July 2008 (UTC))

The difference is that under regular socialism committees TAKE property and income from unwilling givers - by taxation, condemnation, and nationalization. In a heavenly economy, people coordinate their economic activity voluntarily for the sake of the whole purpose.

The other difference is that in Capitalism greedy people can get a monopoly and manipulate supply to raise prices far beyond what normal demand would support. In heaven, the "destructive competition for the market" would never occur, since people would feel (in anticipation) the pain that would cause to others. --Uncle Ed (talk) 15:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me (paradoxically, I might add, something Chesterton would have loved) that the Mormons are a very good example of distributism being put to practice, at least as it was practiced in its first days: largely a cooperative society, with people owning and operating their own means of production yet working for the common good of the group. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Flylooper (talk • contribs) 14:05, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

nationalism

The section on controversy manages masterfully to muddy the waters and cast aspersions left, right and centre. Distributism cannot be fascist or corporatist, otherwise it isn't distributist. The fact that some non-distributists claim to be distributists is of minimal encyclopedic interest and belongs in the entry on original sin. It is at best a distraction and at worst a slur masquerading as encyclopedism. The only controversy which belongs in this section is the discussion between the other systems and distributism. danon uk

ot, but: The fact that some non-distributists claim to be distributists is of minimal encyclopedic interest and belongs in the entry on original sin. - I love that sentence. (no kidding)--131.159.0.7 (talk) 13:37, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Re-added link for "Third Way" which was inappropriately removed

The article uses the term "Third Way". We should have a link for this term, which will be unfamiliar to many readers.

I linked to Third Way (centrism), which should be appropriate in this context.

User:Loremaster inappropriately reverted this link. I've re-added it.

Please discuss as appropriate.

-- 186.221.135.185 (talk) 16:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

The statement that distributism is considered "Third Way" must be cited. I looked at the given citations in both "The New Economics" and "Three and One" and neither makes any mention of "Third Way" nor makes any other statement that supports the connection. I'm removing the mentions of "Third Way" since it's dubious and there's no legitimate support for including it here. The whole idea of Third Way was a late 20th century concept and distributism was an early 20th century idea.--Bkwillwm (talk) 19:04, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

It looks like the two citations I mentioned were not originally intended to support the use of "Third Way." I was under the impression that they were included for the purpose of backing that claim, but they were in the text without "Third Way." The point remains that there is no citation for "Third Way."--Bkwillwm (talk) 06:19, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I removed the two internal links to the Third Way centrismn article because Distributism is an entirely different form of Third Way economic philosophy than the "Third Way" promoted by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, as Richard Howard explains quite well in his paper Distributism as a means of achieving third way economics. --Loremaster (talk) 01:29, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

This article lacks any discussion on the practical application of distributism

It speaks of the aspirations and goals of the system, but not on the actions taken to achieve them. For example, widespread land ownership is advocated, but how would this be achieved? Would the state confiscate land from some to give it to others? How would the guild system work? Would non-guild members be prevented by the state from selling their goods? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.208.40.196 (talk) 11:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Consider that to a certain extent it may not so much require actions as the removal of obstacles and enforcements. Both socialism and capitalism cannot exist without state enforcement. The corporation is created and defended by the state. Take away that support and the corporation will naturally wither.

The guilds are no more than a recognition that 7 billion individuals each owning one 7 billionth of the world's means of production just might be a bit impractical :-) and that said individuals will naturally tend to form aggregates in their own best interest. Certainly no one and no group would be prevented from making and selling goods.

You have certainly put your finger on the central question when you ask how the means of production (not just land) will be taken and distributed. One way of looking at it is, just what mechanisms currently enforce the concentration of the means of production in the few. If you see this as the taking of a right, you can begin to imagine how to rectify the injustice. But it is undeniably a tough nut to crack. Fnj2 (talk) 16:34, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

In the book The Outline of Sanity, G. K. Chesterton wrote about practical application. In the chapter A Misunderstanding About Method he gave half dozen examples about what could be done, for example "Napoleonic testamentary law and the destruction of primogeniture." –Nikolas Ojala (talk) 12:46, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Pope Francis quote

Sorry to be blunt, but what the hell it has to do with distributism? I know it is now very popular to cover all ideas with the name of the popular Pope, but this seems to go really over the board.

I would vote for throwing away whole paragraph with the citation.

Ceplm (talk) 09:19, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

"economic ideology"

The introduction refers to Distributism as an "economic ideology." Is this the most accurate term for Distributism? Would we be better off referring to it as an economic theory? Beaven (talk) 01:18, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

Terminology Misuse

That is a sophomoric definition of "Capitalism" at the top of the page. This is a consistent problem most often found on Wikipedia. Students need to learn the terms: Monopoly, Oligopoly, & Keynesian Economics - in place of the defunct, passé, & false Marxian pejorative usage of "Capitalism." The Marxian system was never a legitimate economic model but was widely successful at facilitating popular and academic misuse & misunderstandings of terminology & history. It needs to be cleared out of here. It is time for academia to get up to date & if all it reads is Wiki Land, it will be in the Michael Moore & Phil Donohue league of pseudo culture. Request the students who work on Wikipedia to stop blaming the amorphously abused term, "Capitalism" for the problems of "Socialism," "Statism," ie., hyper centralization.Wiki truth enlighten (talk) 15:10, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

This point of view is supported by Jamie Whyte in his Crimes against logic (McGraw Hill Professional, 2004) ISBN 0071446435 page 104. However, a single article talk page is not the place for a global discussiob. It would help to decide whether there are specific uses of Marxian terminology in this article that import a non-neutral point of view. Zarboublian (talk) 11:23, 18 September 2010 (UTC)

Further on that aspect, how would you save money for a rainy day under a Distributist system? Please could some expert add a few words on that.86.42.206.180 (talk) 10:14, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Definitions are free. "Capitalism", as the Distributist understands it, is "the economy where the normal state of affairs for a normal citizen is to sell one's work to someone else for a wage"; to be more explicit, see the definitions by Belloc and Chesterton (who pondered the problem and concluded "hence, I will define what I mean by 'Capitalism', as follows"). One notable point is that if the worker works for anything that has capital in shares, he is not a shareholder.

This Capitalism, as the distributist defines it, is clearly enough defined; the distributists don't particularly like it and say why. Of course, one might disagree; this is what these debates are about - which word is used, however, is immaterial.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:BDAA:6E47:1407:3E56 (talk) 22:17, 3 January 2018 (UTC)