That isn't just bullshit…

Me: "The point of distributism is that capitalism must regulate-itself-or-be-regulated in a way that protects and promotes the very conditions which make capitalism possible. Labor is taken as a given in neoclassical economics, but labor is nothing more than laborers, who are nothing more than the sons and daughters of families. Therefore, the market must first respect families –– the market must not use families, it must consist in families."

My coworker: "Hm. That's the first thing I've heard that… takes away from capitalism… that isn't just bullshit."

I now understand the reason for my doubts…

"Until very recently, … I had grave doubts that what has come to be called 'capitalism' could establish the kind of economic democracy which political democracy required as its counterpart. I now understand the reasons for my doubts. They were based on an understanding of 'capitalism' which was colored by the sound criticisms that had been leveled against its injustices and inequities, not only by Marx and Engels, and by socialists generally, but also by Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI, and by social philosophers or reformers as diverse as Alexis de Tocqueville, Horace Mann, Henry George, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Hilaire Belloc, Jacques Maritain, Amintore Fanfani, and Karl Polanyi."

-- Mortimer Adler, Preface to The Capitalist Manifesto (1958) by Louis Kelso, p. 5.

Expropriation in Taiwan…

"Elderly farmers... said the proposed amendments to the Act of Eminent Domain are still tilted toward corporations. Tsai Pei-hui, a professor of Social Transformation Studies at Shih Hsin University who joined the protest, said a dozen of the controversial land expropriation cases in special agricultural zones are related to major government construction projects. The draft amendment... allows the government to acquire private lands in agricultural zones, which means farmers' properties can be expropriated at will.... One of the main points of the amendment bill is that land expropriation must be in the 'public interest....'" However, the draft bill, which was scheduled for a second reading Tuesday, did not take into consideration the public's opinions on what constitutes 'public interest,' [Tsai] said."

Farmers say draft bill fails to address land expropriation woes - Taiwan News Online

www.taiwannews.com.tw

Avarice is directly a sin against neighbor…

"External goods [i.e. commodities] have the character of means useful for an end. Hence man's good in them must consist in a certain measure of them; that is, a man must seek to have external riches only in a certain measure, insofar as they are necessary for him in his state of life. In any excess of the measure there will be sin; it is evil if he should wish to get or keep them beyond a right measure. This would be avarice, which is defined as 'the immoderate love of having.' ...

Avarice can be immoderate in external goods in two ways. First, directly in the getting or keeping of these goods, by getting of keeping them more than he should. This is directly a sin against our neighbor, because external goods cannot be simultaneously possessed by many, and therefore, if one man has more than he ought, others have less than they ought.

Secondly, avarice can imply an immoderateness in the internal affection we have for riches, namely, by immoderately loving, desiring, or delighting in them.... Consequently, it is a sin against God."

-- St. Thomas Aquinas ST IIa IIae, q. 88, Art. 4, resp. 1.

The necessary role of justice in political economy…

"Medaille suggests that economics—better labeled as political economy—lost its way under the influence of David Hume and Bernard de Mandeville. ... As his antidote, the author returns to the political economy of Aristotle and to the necessary place of justice in proper theory. ... Aristotle also argued that '[t]he family is the association established by nature for the supply of men’s everyday wants.' Medaille elaborates: 'It is the family, and not the individual, that is the starting point ... because only the family is [fundamentally] self-sufficient; an individual in isolation can neither reproduce nor provide for himself.' Accordingly, all economics is necessarily social, or communitarian. This return to Aristotle also points to measures of justice. ...

"The author also resurrects the key insights of early 20th Century Distributists[: namely,] 'Markets are not natural phenomenon, but are socially created'; '…exchange does not create wealth; that happens in the production process'[;] …if the worker is to reap the full value of his labor, then he must own an interest in the land he works; — “Property must be seen as an aid to productive work, and not as a substitute for it'; and —-“This accumulation of property into the hands of those who do not use it is the sole cause of the vast inequalities that bedevil civil society and economic order” [referencing here Adam Smith—one of the author’s heroes-- “Wherever there is great property there is great inequality…[and] the indigence of the many”]. In each case, Medaille provides provocative elaborations of these basic premises behind the Call for a Property State."

-- "Commentary on John Medaille’s Toward a Truly Free Market" | Front Porch Republic - www.frontporchrepublic.com

A fantasy world of moral and fiscal unreality...

Debt, Finance, and Catholics

Samuel Gregg

Debt and deficits seem to be on everyone’s minds these days. ... Unfortunately, modern Catholic social encyclicals have relatively little to say about financial questions. Even the 2004 Compendium of Catholic Social Doctrine confines itself to very broad statements about finance and foreign debt, and it never really addresses the moral dimension of private and public debt.This absence of sustained contemporary Catholic reflection on financial questions is puzzling. ... Indeed, for many centuries, Catholic bishops and theologians invested considerable energy in understanding the world of money because of the usury question. Catholic thinkers were consequently among the first to identify money’s primary functions, illustrate how money in the conditions of economic freedom could assume the form of capital, demonstrate the moral legitimacy of charging interest on money-as-capital, and assess the moral status of different debts in different contexts. 

... [E]arly-modern Catholic theologians assailed governments who tried to escape their debts by measures such as inflating the currency or borrowing more money to pay for interest payments on existing public debt, or who spent large portions of the taxes they raised on servicing debt or on activities that were either morally evil or simply did not fall within the core functions of constitutionally limited governments. 

... Today one looks in vain for Catholic thinkers studying our debt and deficit problems from standpoints equally well-informed by economics and sound Catholic moral reflection. ... Instead, one finds broad admonitions such as “put the interests of the poor first” in an age of budget-cutting. The desire to watch out for the poor’s well being in an environment of fiscal restraint is laudable. But that’s not a reason to remain silent about the often morally-questionable choices and policies that helped create our personal and public debt dilemmas in the first place.  

One Catholic who has proved willing to engage these issues is none other than Pope Benedict XVI. In his 2010 interview book Light of the World, Benedict pointed to a deeper moral disorder associated with the running-up of high levels of private and public debt. ...  

In other words, someone has to pay for all this debt. And clearly many Western Europeans and Americans seem quite happy for their children to pick up the bill. That’s a rather flagrant violation of intergenerational solidarity.  

... This willingness on the part of governments, communities, and individuals to live off debt means that people are “living in untruth.” ...  

In fact, it’s possible to go further and argue such attitudes reflect a mindset of practical atheism: living and acting as if God does not exist, as if the only life is this life, as if the future does not matter. Only people who have no hope — no hope in God, no hope in redemption, no hope for the future — will think and act this way. ... 

For if we choose to live our lives according to a perspective dominated by immediate gratification or pursue economic policies forever focused on the short term (which is, more or less, Keynesianism’s Achilles’ heel), then living off debt is entirely rational. But what does that say about our priorities and conception of human flourishing?  

Taking on debt is not in itself intrinsically evil. In many circumstances, it’s an entirely reasonable decision. Nevertheless, a situation of inexorably increasing debt and a failure to confront its moral and economic causes can slowly corrode our personal sense of responsibility for our freely undertaken obligations and severely tempt us to live in a fantasy world of moral and fiscal unreality. ...