It’s neither capitalism north socialism, because it doesn’t have government own or control the means of production and encourages free enterprise, but favors policies that keep wealth from getting too unequal and believes everyone has a right to some of the wealth that comes from natural resources—nobody produced the oil in the ground, for instance, so everyone should benefit from its use. It’s basically a moderate position in Western countries, since none of them are totally socialist yet they all have some welfare programs.
In an agrarian society, it would support land being owned by the people that work it rather than by the gentry, that’s the background of where distributism comes from.
Thanks.
Sounds close to what I assumed it was.
Also sounds kind of close to my own "idealistic" views of society.
I consider capitalism infinitly better then communism.
Yet, I also recognise much problems in capitalism.
I always thought that some kind of middle ground would be best.
Not necessarily in some kind of "distributism" or something. I look at it from an other angle. That angle being, some sort of limit on personal wealth.
If you ever saw the movie Entrapment (I think that's what it's called), there's a great line in there. Perhaps it's even the line that got me thinking about this. In the movie, someone wants to rob some bank or whateer and they disagree on when and how and where. One of the characters wants to hit some more risky safe, because it would fetch 7 billion instead of 1 billion in the more safer location. The line then goes: "
What can you do with 7 billion, that you can't do with 1 billion?".
Then think about the list of richest people in the world. That Amazone dude with his 100 billion and stuff. It's ridiculous. In that sense, I'm in favor of some kind of law that tops personal property of at like a billion dollars or something. That's still
ridiculously rich. Everything above that, should be distributed according to certain rules. For example, X% of the "surplus" could flow towards the employee's of the company in the form of yearly bonus, paid leave, etc. Another % goes to the government treasury (healthcare, education,...). Another % goes to a charity of the company's choice. Another % is reinvested in the company for whatever other positive/productive uses (like switching to cleaner energy or simply R&D etc).
I have
no problem at all with employers become filthy rich. After all, they're the ones who are working (or who have worked) 80-hour weeks to jump start those businesses. They are the ones who provide others with jobs. They are the ones taking all the risks.
But indeed............ what can you do with 100 billion, that you can't do with 1 billion?
Lots of things I imagine. Mostly useless and unecessary things. Like a billon dollar boat that is used 2x per year for holidays at sea. Go to a hotel, like the rest of us...
