The Word Cloud

I hate discussing politics and religion, but since I’ve broached the subject, you know I’m gonna.

I hate discussing it because I hate being told what to believe. I like to be given all the facts and then left alone to make up my own mind. I hate imposing my opinions on others. I am a bear of very little brain and find complex subjects hard to process, and thus fall to pieces when aggressively challenged and required to offer a quick defense of my beliefs and views.

I like blogs, because I can lay out my thoughts in an orderly and considered manner.

This doesn’t mean I will, though.

I found out about Distributism whilst reading up on G K Chesterton.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of it before, but briefly, and according to the mighty Wikipedia, Distributism is a ‘third-way economic philosophy’ which boils down to evenly distributing the apparatus of wealth-generation, rather than the wealth itself. It allows people to make money for themselves, but not too much. It encourages cottage industry and community spirit.

Whilst mulling it over, I also considered the future of English retail: A massive Tesco has opened in town, even though we already have one, plus a Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Morrison’s etc. Despite this, there’s always a queue outside our local butcher. Organic farm shops have sprung up like mushrooms. Half a dozen of my friends make and sell jewelry in their spare time, and people are falling over themselves to buy it. I can’t buy ‘good’ meat unless I get up at 6am and queue for half an hour, but I can buy mediocre meat twenty-four hours a day. Both my partner and I work full time to support our ‘lifestyle’, even though this only includes mediocre meat from Tesco after work. I slowly go crazy because I am told that this is the way things should be – because the alternative to Capitalism is Bad.

Anyway. I think the only reason I’ve never heard of Distributism (apart from my general obliviousness) is that it is heavily steeped in Catholicism, and I have been raised by Protestants. I am, in any case, skeptical of anything that has been grown in the flowerpot of religion.

It’s at about this point that I’d start blasting religion if I were the kind of person to do so. I’m not that kind of person.

Instead I will give the theory a fair trial, and ask myself how I would go about convincing a dedicated Capitalist that Distributism would be a good idea, without the backing of religion.

‘Respect for fellow man?’ – Hasn’t worked so far. ‘You’d get to spend lots of time in the garden, growing tomatoes?’ – Not everyone has green fingers. My skills rely firmly on computers and software – not really something that a cottage industry could support. I suppose you could re-train me in something manual, but I would miss designing. And writing. And surfing the interwebs. ‘Respect for nature and the countryside?’ – See response to argument one. ‘It’s fair – it gives everyone an equal chance in life, and a choice of product?’ – What’s fair about stopping me becoming a millionaire? I mean, I’d rather not work at all.

Hmm. I seem to have run out of arguments.

There are some other troubling points, too:

If you prevent anyone from becoming too rich, who could afford to fund scientific research? I might be happy to grow my own tomatoes, but I would also still want a cure for cancer. I might want to cruise around a Norwegian Fjord one day. Perhaps I would like to go to the Moon.

And people will always be greedy and stupid. Give a group of men* a bag of tools and one might use the hammer to hit another man over the head and steal all the rivets. Another might sell the screwdriver for drugs. One, possibly, might make himself a pair of shoes and be happy.

If someone were to ask me whether I considered myself a Capitalist, I’d reply ‘only by birth, dude’. If they were to ask me whether I considered myself a Communist, I’d look at them funny and say ‘seriously? We both know you can’t take away people’s incentive to work and expect them to do so anyway. We’re far too greedy and stupid for that.’

Despite all this, though, I find myself oddly drawn to Distributism in a happy-clappy kind of way. I feel it resonates with the general mood of the country – or at least, the bit of it that I’m sitting on. I can’t support it by way of argument, yet it seems reasonably sensible. It might not be a path that England chooses knowingly, and we seem to be both headed towards and away from it at the same time.

I don’t feel wise enough to get behind any movement in particular, so I might just sit on the fence for a while longer.

At least until I win the lottery.


*Or women.