Building the Ownership Society.

[Wessexman]

To those interested in distributism here is John Medaille's last chapter for his new work on it. It is quite interesting.

The Distributist Review: Chapter XIX: Building the Ownership Society


Building an ownership society involves both political and economic goals. The political goals are based on the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity (Chapter XIII). The economic goals are built on the principle that justice is intrinsic to economic order, and not some added extra or exogenous feature (Chapter VI)......


......Conservatives express great frustration with the egregious violations of the Constitution by the legislatures and the courts, violations which ensure that power gravitates to the federal government, while the states become mere bureaucratic subdivisions of the federal apparatus rather than partners in a political union. In response, they call for a devolution, a return of power to the states. Many historical, political, and philosophical reasons could be advanced for the centralization of power, but at base this turns out to be a fiscal problem. Power follows property, as Daniel Webster noted. The political equivalent is that power follows funding, that it gravitates towards that level of government that has the most money to spend. When the federal government acquired the power to tax incomes with the 16th Amendment in 1913—a source of funds with no natural limit—the rest of the constitution gradually became irrelevant.

 

[Wessexman]

Now I don't agree with everything he says, or at least advocate it for Britain; though on the other hand I'd sometimes go further than he does.

I do find it interesting that distributism has something to offer for many ideologies. It offers social justice and opposition to corporate-capitalism to the liberals, a sound base for social conservatism and a revival of decentralised gov't, local community and family for conservatives(and some classical liberals.) and a significantly smaller position for the state in the economy and society for classical liberals and American style libertarians(and many conservatives and even some liberals.). And obviously for Greens(and many others.) a more ecologically sustainable regime.

Obviously it doesn't appeal to everyone, the fervent centralisers, univeralists and globalists will never love it but for anyone who occupies what could be called the decentralist half of the political spectrum it should at least hold a good bit of interest.