Another belated verse in our < ? getlink("Distributism I: The Ballad Begins", "Ballad of Distributism") ; ?> .
In an < ? getlink("Distributism IV: Make Farms, Not Stupid Cliches", "earlier blog") ; ?> , I gave a simple plan to phase corporations out by taxation. Communist? Thomas Jefferson had a similar plan for large landowners.
In “corporation”, I don’t include worker-owned businesses; I mean what 96.2% of the human race currently means by “corporation.” A few lords swell in wealth, the majority jump through hoops for a wage. Since this situation is unjust and a rather pressing aspect of public life, it is the State’s duty to take peaceful steps to change it.
I’m a big fan of subsidiarity—a problem should always be solved by the most smallest and most local group possible. Most of my Distributist dreams focus on the economic independence of families and towns, which obviously makes me a Socialist. But multinational corporations are multinational disasters, so it doesn’t seem inappopriate to seek higher help than the local mayor.
The Capitalist (who—be honest!—hopes to run a corporation one day) might try to prove that corporations are the one guardian angel standing between us and Red Washington. Clearly, our free market friends at Halliburton, Monsanto, and Micro$oft are the last hope of the free world. But there’s a more obvious rebuttal. Nobody forces anyone to shop at, er, Halliburton. If it was that bad, the dollars would flow elsewhere. In a free market, a business only exists if people choose it. Right?
Well, our economy is slightly more complicated.
Suppose you want to start a hardware store. In the next town is a superdupercenter, which we’ll veil with anonymity and call Crap-Mart. There’ll be stiff competition, but you’re undaunted. You think that with quality service, you can make up the difference and succeed. You go to the bank to get a business loan—
Oh. They’re not so interested. If you were already doing a thriving business and wanted to double it, they’d be sure to get a big slab of interest. But as it is…well…you’re not exactly an asset.
Eventually, you find a small place that gives you less than you need at a higher rate than you can pay. Still, you open accounts with various suppliers—
Oops. Will they even bother to open an account for such a small vendor? If so, you’ll pay higher prices than Crap-Mart, because you won’t get bulk discounts.
Right off, you’re at a disadvantage. But you open anyway. Roughly thirteen minutes after you open, Crap-Mart happens to slash their hardware prices. They’re selling at cost or lower…for as long as it takes to shut you down.
They can survive on their capital. You can’t.
Could people keep shopping at your store, regardless? Well, yes, but it’s not unjust if they don’t. (Unless you get into moral co-operation and all that.) Maybe they don’t know that Crap-Mart can only offer these low prices by relentless injustice.
Maybe they don’t know how Crap-Mart’s trashes their employees, their suppliers, and the people in the sweatshops that supply the suppliers. Crap-Mart isn’t “winning” just by the dollar votes of the people. Those low prices are purchased dearly.
Oddly, this happy trail of sweatshop and extortion has blazed through every Capitalist society I know of, from Dicken’s England to the sneakers on our feet. It’s not a fair fight. Crap-Mart can undersell you. But do they have the right to do so?
There used to be a Just Price. Tradesmen (not a theocracy) got together in a guild for their trade. They decided on a range of prices, high and low. They set that range because they knew best the particular expenses, production times, and profit margins of their particular craft.
No one could go above that range without cheating the people. No one could go below that range and survive unless he had other money stashed away to live on. And if you had enough economic might to sell at a loss and drive a poorer man out of business, that was the economic equivalent of bashing his face in.
Was that “controlling the market”? Yes. But so is prosecuting Enron. In short, the market is neither more nor less free than anything else we humans do. We have economic rights, and they should be protected.
The average man who works hard at his own business has the right to a market where he will normally succeed, not normally get squashed. A CEO has no more “right” to smash a guy with his wealth than a gangster does to smash the CEO with his fist.
So what happened if you flaunted the Just Price? Unoffically, you’d probably get beat up. Officially, you’d go to court.
Ha! So they were really just the long arm of the government after all! Mention “guild” to an educated Capitalist, and you hit the panic button. “Guilds? More government control? Get back, Marx! Don’t touch me!”
Well. I have yet to find the government agency where normal citizens make the rules. That’s why we don’t call them guilds.
Guilds are really rather simple.
Guild makes rules.
Government enforces rules.
If the guild makes the rules, how are they part of the government?
Who works out local zoning? Some town committee. If Crap-Mart wants a riverside field, the town can say no. If Crap-Mart builds anyway, what happens? The local town takes Crap-Mart to court.
Then Crap-Mart pays off the judge. But the point is, if the State prosecuted Crap-Mart, it would be enforcing a decision that the town had made for itself. Guilds work the same way.
So go start a guild.
Obviously, waiting for the government to rise and defend our freedom is like holding your breakfast bowl out until the oatmeal boils itself and hops in. If we really want freedom, we should jolly well slash our own expenses and go find our own way to hold skin to bone without killing our souls. If you own this computer, I bet you can do it.
But many can’t. Capitalism only thrives where hordes of people, robbed of tools, land, and trades, must work for a slave wage. Our great-grandparents did it for Rockefeller. Today, people did it for you and me, down to the clothes on our backs.
Yes, let’s torch our own cubicles and go risk poverty for some overdue sanity, justice, and fun. But we’re part of a bigger world, and we at least need to know what kind of change in society we want. Many need that change far more than we, and they have much less chance for a private victory. They may even need our help.
