Nov 23 2008
Could Distributists Use The Current Crises For Their Advantage?
Yes, I know it weird question, but one that needs pondering.
Global Capitalism has shown its flaws and they have been amplified by the current economic downturn and financial crisis. Both have shown that bigger is not always better when it come to the economy. What has even made it worse is the Socialist “engineering” (more like meddling) forcing global financial institutions into making questionable, and possibly suicidal, lending practices.
Under a distributist economic system, much of the situation we are in now could have been localized, minimized, and maybe even prevented instead of causing global problems.
How can the distrubutists use this to their advantage?
First. Working locally to rebuild financial stability without relying of the global banking system. Get banking back to the community level though community banks, savings and loans, and credit unions that are not tied to the big financial institutions. This also means not selling loans to big commercial financial institutions. If the loans are not sold, the local financial institutions will be more responsive to who they lend the money to. And, in the case of S&L’s (I believe it is still so) and Credit Unions, the depositors are owners not customers.
In addition, there are calls to abolish the Federal Reserve, this should be seriously considered. National policies do not translate to the local level. This is an area that I am not completely up on and do not know all the ramifications, so I will leave it at that.
Second. Use the downturn the economy and the unjustified layoffs just to preserve their profits against the national/global corporations. This would be done through both publicity and action to create and/or promote local competitors for the global industries. It would first have to first start with industries that have easy access to local resources. A good example would be food (both agricultural and livestock). After the easily established industries are establish then we could.
Third. Establish advocacy groups (i.e. PACS) to promote distributism friendly policies at the local, state, and federal level. This may be the hardest to do since both capitalism and socialism seem to be the only two economic structures deemed to be valid.
Finally, use all of the above to establish a societal structure based not only on distributism but also on Catholic Moral and Social teaching, which is the ultimate goal. Now I know many are not Catholic in today’s society however, with the way society is declining (I call it imploding), we need to establish an alternative societal structure to either save or reestablish society.
