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Comment by wireprotocol | Hacker News Reader

I'm inclined to like this idea, but it seems to be framed in a way that centralizes a lot of governmental power.

Why not look for ways to decentralize power and also decentralize resources? For instance, removing or limiting various privileges of large corporations that individuals don't have.

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My understanding of distributism has been that it has among its aims to localize governmental power. I don't mind strengthening a government where my vote actually makes a difference.

Especially in the incarnations of distributism that have a large overlap with Georgism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism) you see this sort of thing manifest in e.g. the land tax (strengthens local governments who are the assessors of said tax -- and if land tax is your society's primary tax, then power naturally devolves from the center to the local).

Where do things like written rights come in to play?

What is the difference between dostributism and federalism?

Distributism, being a Catholic belief, is ultimately based on the principal of subsidiarity, which is a Catholic social doctrine stating that all matters of government ought to be handled at the most local level competent and able enough to deal with the matter. Thus, while national defense may best lay with the national government, the trash pickup schedule is best decided by local processes.

I don’t see why Catholism is emphasized so much in your answer. The concepts discussed exist independently of Catholism, have their roots before Catholism and looking at them from a religious angle confounds more than it clarifies.

It’s based on the writings of Catholic popes. I think calling it Catholic merely gives credit to its recent originators.

It’s just the same as calling a school of economics Austrian, or a branch of psychology Freudian.

Additionally the foremost apologists for Distributism, G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, were Catholic writers.

Becahse distributism was first explained by catholic scholars. In order to understand them you must understand their catholicism

But you can translate this to corporations, and consider that large corporations are more efficient than small ones. But large corporations have downsides, so the optimum is somewhere in the middle (?)

This is the anarchy road. I am with you on this one. Power corrupts. Hierachies enslave. We need a more horizontal society. We need more decentralization.

I wonder how you avoid it devolving into feudalism, it doesn't seem like a system that can hold itself in place.

You can't. Removing rigid social structures, authorities, and hierarchy only results in those structures being slowly and informally reproduced once again, until someone once again formalizes and crystallizes a semi-authoritarian, hierarchical structure. Everything slowly centralizes itself to the maximum extent that the technology and economics of that time allows. Places where this does not happen in large scales are exceptional; the sheer logistical capability of a centralized system blows most decentralized systems out of the water once it finds its proper implementation. Systems of high freedom and low centralization can only exist fleetingly, in times where resources are plentiful and there is wide expanse, where the roots of authority have not yet had time to grow. At best you can delay the process with education and good civics, but eventually no matter how well you draft your founding documents, no matter how good your teachers are, crisis, fragmentation, and desperation will eventually invite the authoritarian again.

If you reran history ten thousand times and adjusted the positions of 10 thousand butterflies, the Mahknos of history will never prevail against the Lenins, the people will crown and laud their Caesars and Napoleons and Frederick William IVs, etc. That we will ever get a luxury space communism is a fantasy.

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