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Thread: Economic/Political models

  1. #21
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Ever want to drop out of capitalism? Here is a 7 minute VICE documentary about doing just that!


  2. #22
    Williamsmith
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    It is directly the result of capitalism that we do not worry about starvation, and we can at any time exchange our labor for an improved standard of living. Giving the government control of a system of distribution is a dystopian nightmare. The free market works exactly because the threat of failure is always possible. Removing that by substituting government for business ownership ....well we have plenty of outrageous examples to make observations. Voluntary distributism is the only useful version needed.

  3. #23
    Senior Member Ultralight's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    It is directly the result of capitalism that we do not worry about starvation, and we can at any time exchange our labor for an improved standard of living. Giving the government control of a system of distribution is a dystopian nightmare. The free market works exactly because the threat of failure is always possible. Removing that by substituting government for business ownership ....well we have plenty of outrageous examples to make observations. Voluntary distributism is the only useful version needed.
    Capitalist apologetics! Defend the faith!

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Williamsmith View Post
    It is directly the result of capitalism that we do not worry about starvation, and we can at any time exchange our labor for an improved standard of living. Giving the government control of a system of distribution is a dystopian nightmare.


    Okay, we can tell this kid that he's free at any time to exchange his labor for an improved standard of living and that any free food he's gotten from the government is a dystopian nightmare.

  5. #25
    Senior Member iris lilies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by catherine View Post
    No, IL, personal property is not handed out like beads off a Mardi Gras float--beads swiped from your neck or Alan's or bae's.

    Private property, from what I understand, would be bought and sold just the way it is today. But rather than getting your mortgage from Chase or Wells Fargo, it would be from a local lender like George Bailey. Distributism seeks to empower people at all levels of society to be creative and free because it's social order from the bottom up. It prioritizes the freedoms of small communities over state-run bureaucracies. In a distributes society, workers would share in the production as well as the capital--so there would be more worker co-ops and private industry.

    the distributists were not advocating the redistribution of “wealth” per se, though they believed that this would be one of the results of distributism. Instead, and the difference is crucial, they were advocating the redistribution of the means of production to as many people as possible. Belloc and the distributists drew the vital connection between the freedom of labor and its relationship with the other factors of production—i.e., land, capital, and the entrepreneurial spirit. The more that labor is divorced from the other factors of production the more it is enslaved to the will of powers beyond its control. In an ideal world every man would own the land on which, and the tools with which, he worked. In an ideal world he would control his own destiny by having control over the means to his livelihood. For Belloc, this was the most important economic freedom, the freedom beside which all other economic freedoms are relatively trivial. If a man has this freedom he will not so easily succumb to encroachments upon his other freedoms.


    Believe me, I'm no expert, but I think it's an interesting alternative.
    Oh I am just a little old librarian lady on a modest fixed income (doncha like me playing that victim role? Love my new freedom to be amoung the lower social order as defined by income! And a senior citizen now! So much victim identity here, what fun) so they wont come after me, just Alan and bae.

    But back to Distributism: so, the idea is that I can offer mortgage money to someone else, and the someone else does not have to deal with the Big Conglomerate Evil Bank.

    Ok, but I can do that today, in today’s current economic system. I can lend all the money I want to whomever I want, no one is stopping me. Or wait, does your Distributism model REQUIRE that I use my money to fund someone’s mortgage? What if I WANT to keep my cash in the mattress, do gubmnt goons force me to lend it out to my neighbor?

    But see, I dont have enough freed up money that I want to lend to one risky endeavor, a mortgagee. That is why I (theoretically) organize with others into a financial lending institution to spread my risk around to many mortgagees. That is collectivism at its finest, me contributing a small percentage and owning a small percentage of the lending institution. I guess your model would not allow that. Seems silly to me.

  6. #26
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    I do love that movie and that vision of the local economy. I think we are moving in that direction in many areas, so I think change has to start there.

  7. #27
    Simpleton Alan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    Oh I am just a little old librarian lady on a modest fixed income (doncha like me playing that victim role? Love my new freedom to be amoung the lower social order as defined by income! And a senior citizen now! So much victim identity here, what fun) so they wont come after me, just Alan and bae.
    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post

    But back to Distributism: so, the idea is that I can offer mortgage money to someone else, and the someone else does not have to deal with the Big Conglomerate Evil Bank.

    Ok, but I can do that today, in today’s current economic system. I can lend all the money I want to whomever I want, no one is stopping me. Or wait, does your Distributism model REQUIRE that I use my money to fund someone’s mortgage? What if I WANT to keep my cash in the mattress, do gubmnt goons force me to lend it out to my neighbor?

    But see, I dont have enough freed up money that I want to lend to one risky endeavor, a mortgagee. That is why I (theoretically) organize with others into a financial lending institution to spread my risk around to many mortgagees. That is collectivism at its finest, me contributing a small percentage and owning a small percentage of the lending institution. I guess your model would not allow that. Seems silly to me.
    You can leave me out of that scenario, three weeks from today I'll be joining the ranks of grey bearded senior citizens living on their accumulated life savings, thereby making me a victim of those capitalist institutions which, oddly enough, enabled me to do so.

    I'm with you on the distributism thing, I don't see any reason people can't engage in that model as they wish and suspect the reason it isn't more widespread is that it is less efficient. I can only suspect that the real focus is to eliminate corporations and other large institutions consisting of many people investing in an efficient means of providing capital, resources and opportunity to others in hopes of eliminating income inequality. It seems like a step backwards to me.
    "Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein

  8. #28
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    Oh I am just a little old librarian lady on a modest fixed income (doncha like me playing that victim role? Love my new freedom to be amoung the lower social order as defined by income! And a senior citizen now! So much victim identity here, what fun) so they wont come after me, just Alan and bae.
    For the past 20 years or so, I've been living on a very modest income, and often qualify to have Alan pay for my full medical insurance. I could get food stamps.

    I strive to minimize taxable income, because I don't like my money being used to kill people.

  9. #29
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by iris lilies View Post
    But back to Distributism: so, the idea is that I can offer mortgage money to someone else, and the someone else does not have to deal with the Big Conglomerate Evil Bank.

    Ok, but I can do that today, in today’s current economic system. I can lend all the money I want to whomever I want, no one is stopping me.
    I've been doing this for decades - funding private mortgages to community members who can't for whatever reason deal with Evil Banks. (Though to be fair, our local Evil Bank, that writes most of the loans hereabouts for locals, has grown to 3 branches, one on each main island, and is owned by the community - evil local Rich Guys started the bank ages ago.)

    I also provide business loans, and buy into local bond issues heavily.

    Recently, I and some other Evil People, put together a fund to provide local mortgages on a bigger scale - the paperwork that had to be jumped through was incredible - it's simpler to do it 1-on-1, as soon as you organize, the barriers erected by our "helpful" government, clearly meant to protect the banking industry from competition, present obstacles.

    Go team!

  10. #30
    Senior Member bae's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by oldhat View Post


    Okay, we can tell this kid that he's free at any time to exchange his labor for an improved standard of living and that any free food he's gotten from the government is a dystopian nightmare.
    A quick reverse image search shows this poor kid was living in East Africa/Somalia, and the photo was taken at a refugee camp in Kenya.

    What caused his state of starvation?

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