Ever want to drop out of capitalism? Here is a 7 minute VICE documentary about doing just that!
Ever want to drop out of capitalism? Here is a 7 minute VICE documentary about doing just that!
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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