As a follow-up to my earlier post, here’s another classic country song, which is as Chestertonian and distributist as anything written by Chesterton on distributism. It’s Alan Jackson’s lament for the plight of the “Little Man” in an economy that quite literally prefers chains to freedom:
Chesterton Country #2
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About the Author: Joseph Pearce
Joseph Pearce is a Catholic author and biographer who has written about subjects as various as GK Chesterton, economics, and Shakespeare.
Oct05 Jennifer,Here’s my [timid] attempt at arensniwg your query:Reliance of people on jobs is not a problem per se. I was not too clear on that point, forgive me. The statement on the reliance on jobs is based on Belloc’s The Servile State. In the book, Belloc spoke about the period in time where English enclosures were enforced. This was the time when peasants and farmers lost their common land and were forced to work inside factories or mines or whatever. When they could have done something productive for themselves with the land where they once worked on, they were forced to work in hazardous environments where there was little pay. This was English industrialization, which spread throughout the world.Now, the working-to-get-paid-at-your-usual-corporation mindset is still very much intact in modern society. Due to the economic recession that hit the world, many corporations went bankrupt or liquidated or could not hire any more people, hence the unemployment problem. Then, we have the conclusion of people’s reliance on working for corporations being a problem. This is similar to Belloc’s Servile State people become slaves to corporations, hence what I wrote above on the reliance on jobs.What alternative do people have? If they can’t work for a corporation, then they could opt to working for a cooperative or something similar—which they own and operate for a mutual benefit. Workers themselves are in control of the firm despite being workers/members.Cooperatives have better job security than [typical] corporations. It has been argued that they provide for equitable distribution of profit and social justice. The cooperative model—as I’ve mentioned—is what had been adopted by Mondragon and Emilia-Romagna.So you see, distributism does not simply advocate permaculture or agrarianism. Cooperatives fit just nicely in the industrial and commercial environment.On your point where you touched on the topic of infrastructure, Prof. Chuck Wilber stated that infrastructure in a certain area may be established cooperatively—neither privately nor state run. Following my answer on your first point, an option also is to have a worker-owned cooperative in charge of establishing infrastructure. We only have to look at Mondragon or Emilia-Romagna to see if the theoretical answers I’ve provided are viable. If we had firms like Mondragon, infrastructure and the like would not really be a problem.We also have to take into consideration that the cooperative system is a highly democratic system. Mondragon has a “one man, one vote” policy as an example. If by popular consensus people would wish to fix roads in a certain community, then the road-fixing would eventually happen. If members wish to establish a certain infrastructure for whatever purpose by popular consensus then they’d make it happen. For that reason alone, people would be compelled to work in a firm with a cooperative/distributist model.In Christ, Mary and Joseph