Lions and Tigers and Usurers, Oh My!

***Update*** A point I neglected to mention is that distributism, like Marxism, seems overly concerned with labor and production of concrete goods. It does not adequately address what could broadly be considered the “service sector,” which could be said to include anyone who does not directly produce a concrete product (bankers, financial professionals, lawyers, doctors and medical personnel, educators, researchers, etc.).

Lance’s recent post on usury and a discussion of the recent Nobel Prize in Economics here and elsewhere prompted me to revisit my old views on economic theory which were essentially summed up by the twentieth century economic philosophy called distributism. For those of you unfamiliar with distributism (and it’s pretty obscure unless you happen to be either a religious studies specialist or an economic historian), several solid descriptions exist here. Although an overtly Catholic system, I found much of what is proposed to be thoroughly compatible with Islamic views, especially as concerns usury. The biggest difference on the usury issue being that Muslims are not allowed to charge any interest, whereas distributism proposes a fixed and “fair” limit on interest. For several years, I considered myself at least a mild distributist and looked to G.K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc for wisdom. Eventually, the utter impracticality of implementing such a system and some very good pro-capitalist papers emerged which convinced me of the folly of distributism.

In looking back, I think that my primary attraction to distributism was the “American dream” world that it promises. Every person who wants to own his own business is encouraged to do so. Large corporations’ power is checked and exploitation of workers is, if not totally eliminated, at least kept to an absolute minimum. The idea of a guild system also appealed to me as a counterbalance to the government. In the end, however, the hard truth about human nature and the reality of living in a capitalist system convinced me that distributism is both wishful thinking and inherently incorrect about the desire of the majority of the workforce to own their own business. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. While it certainly empowers a person and gives them the ability to “be their own boss,” it is also fraught with a great deal of stress and peril. Everyone is not able to handle the stress and responsibility of business ownership. In fact, I suspect that more than 50% of the population is not capable of successfully starting and running a business. Thus most people do, in fact, want to be what distributists’ call “wage slaves.”

Capitalism, for all its faults, does offer the most efficient economic model for the modern world. It responds to the market’s needs more rapidly than any other proposed theory and it always seems to balance itself out in the end. Yes, there are flagrant abuses of power within the capitalist system, but eventually this must be said to work against the success of the abusers as it is “bad business.” Until someone develops a better theory that addresses the faults of capitalism while still retaining its freedom and efficiency, I’m afraid that, like democracy, we are stuck with it.