Monday, December 12, 2011
Some recent posts about "Distributism"
Here's Thaddeus Kozinski; Joe Carter; John Couretas; and Patrick Deneen. Read 'em all.
I'm really torn -- or maybe just mixed up -- about "distributism," in many of the same ways I'm torn (or mixed up) about "new urbanism" and the "slow food" movement. I am attracted to the aesthetics, and even to the underlying anthropology, but put off by the lack of interest these ideas' advocates often seem to display with respect to details about transitions, legal structures, practicalities, coercion, and costs. I love Chesterton and Berry and all that but, dang it, markets and incentives and trade-offs are (this side of Heaven) permanent realities. What I really appreciate is when I read someone who's working on what we might call "applied" and "modest" distributism or new urbanism, someone who proposes reasonably efficient and realistic "nudges" we might use to help people move along the trajectory of real flourishing.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2011/12/some-recent-posts-about-distributism.html
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Rick,
The urban "renewal" monstrosities to which new urbanism responds, the modern food economy to which slow food responds, and big-business big-government to which distributism responds were all largely the creation of the state via subsidies and other spurs and not really "market incentives."
Suburbia itself was largely spurred by government built super highways and HUD (or whatever the equivalent in the 40s/50s was) guidelines on how to build new developments. You mention costs, but suburbia ain't cheap. All of the road/sewer/power infrastructure is much more expensive for urban sprawl than a more "human scale" town or urban center that is largely walkable and cars are superfluous. I think you can see many new urbanist projects flourishing in "in-fill" projects across the country.
The modern agroconomy is largely the result of government subsidies that favor mono-culture which is why the State of Indiana is variously a corn field or soy-bean field.
And Walmart is heavily subsidized whereas mom and pop shops ain't. I would take some of the stuff on this website with a grain of salt, but it illustrates in part how state and local governments heap money on Walmart, giving the retailer a huge competitive advantage over mom and pop: http://www.walmartsubsidywatch.org/
I would wager that if we stopped subsidizing and bailing out the big guys, we would be "nudging" things in the right direction.
Sorry about the rant, but I think that for people like Chesterton and Berry statism is the problem not the solution.