1)Explaining Holy Roman Empire in terms of comparing to US. - Pt I, 2 a) Part II, more on Guilds than on Holy Roman Empire, 2 b) Guilds and Distributism, Defined, Defended, 2 c) What Did Social Aid Look like in the Middle Ages? (Link, Quotes and Comment) Or was it sth else?, 3) Holy Roman Empire explained for US, but we are heading back for Rome now, Pt III
PFH (status and comment):
reminds everyone, Rousseau was the first distributism, if that is not so, tell me how he differed or how distributism is not anti-God
don't bother, we all know it is
Distributism is FOR boundaries between properties, Rousseau is AGAINST them. If you had not said "reminds everyone", ... wait - is this an April Fools joke? [not so, unfortunately]
CWK:
Distributism doesn't benefit people, it just puts price controls on the cost of labor, and that's nothing more than socialism. Inmho.
"price controls on the cost of labor"?
Well, Catholic states have been all for price controls, both for this and for other costs.
"different people have work skills that allow them to work at jobs that pay a lot higher wage than a person who is a low wage worker working for minimin wage at Mc Donald's."
Distributism might consider forbidding McDonald restaurants. = Oblige local owners (yes, franchising is a pretty distributist thing as far as it goes) to better working conditions and wages. Anyway, it is not the absolute skills that allow McDo workers no better job than at McDo, but someone's estimation of relative skills.
But that would not be like seizing the McDo restaurants for government, it would be like obliging them to do a decent thing for employees and for customers. The franchising central entity might also be forbidden to tax restaurants for use of McDo insignia.
BUT, a goldmsmith should be better paid than a blacksmith. A blacksmith better than a cobbler. And a cobbler handsewing shoes should be better paid than people using the McKay machine marketed by a Yankee during War between the States.
Not meaning any of the three should be employees, primarily. This is not utopia in the sense of has never been, will never be. This is backward, and some of us are proud of it.
CWK:
Hans-Georg Lundahl "Well, Catholic states have been all for price controls, both for this and for other costs." Prove it
[commenting on sth said by codebater on my side:] "Do not get me wrong, I do not think you would agree, but I take a certain pride in unity of the comparison.
As for the second part, if we are using the same definition and idea of “price control,” than I humbly submit that your definition of socialism is too broad. Would you consider price control by regulatory guilds, as found in Medieval Christendom, to socialistic?" There's a difference between collective negotiations and price controls, although Guilds can price themselves so high that they're no longer usable, when that happens, people start to think about how they can do without or circumvent whatever service the guilds offer.
"Guilds can price themselves so high that they're no longer usable, when that happens, people start to think about how they can do without or circumvent whatever service the guilds offer." - When that happened the city state considered the guild to have broken contract and itself free to allow free masters (masters outside the guild) to trade in the city. Same thing if quality was lowered or otherwise considered insufficient. Which is proof of the proposition you wanted proven.
How is it proof? By the fact that according to contract between guild and city state normally - contrasting with the case in point - only the masters of the guild were allowed to establish themselves in the city. Goods from outside were taxed by tolls, in order to protect work opportunities / enterprise opportunities within each city.
In my answer to C[WK], above, I mentioned "city-states". I felt this calls for clarification. So I wrote this note (on my other profile): (link to FB here replaced by link to Pt I)
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/04/explaining-holy-roman-empire-in-terms.html
PFH:
"catholics states have always had price controls" [sic!]
rubbish!
restraints on trade are in direct violation of the magna carta.
about the boundaries around property issue; in the first place, i was comparing the two in their phi...losophy, not so much in their politics. The philosophy, in ether case is, "we were all pretty much good, with some exceptions, then some institution came out and now we are mostly selfish and everything is bad". In the one case, that institution was private property, in the other case, that institution was the illusive "capitalism" never defined of coarse, as definitions are pre-romanticism and therefore not traditionalist or groovy enough for distributists who are all about feelings, never doctrine.
That said, you have yet to give an argument for that arrangement other then that it is not communism and people used to do something like it....
About a "society of small owners" why should people be made to own who would rather not?
Because you put proffits ahead of human welfare
P[FH], on April 3 I wrote - and now I copy-paste: "Well, Catholic states have been all for price controls, both for this and for other costs." 5 hours ago you quoted me as saying - now it is your quote that I copy-paste: "catholics states have always had price controls" [sic!]
Lesson, when you quote on internet, use copy-paste to ensure exact quote. The quote supposedly from me that you wrote is indeed rubbish, but it is as quoted by you, not from me. I never use the phrase "have always been for", I used the phrase "have been all for"="not at all against".
On his comparison between Rousseau and Chesterton: "The philosophy, in ether case is, 'we were all pretty much good, with some exceptions, then some institution came out and now we are mostly selfish and everything is bad'."
Not so. Not only is there a vast philosophical leap between positing a pre-property society destroyed by private property and recording a pre-Capitalist society destroyed by Capitalism, Chesterton is not saying that "now we are mostly selfish", but that selfish people by owning too much are empowered to destroy too much for more decent people.
"restraints on trade are in direct violation of the magna carta."
- 1) It remained in function as law for a very short period of time, a Pope absolved King John Lackland from the oath and signature thereof.
- 2) You have not quoted the exact phrase in which "restraints on trade" are forbidden by it.
- 3) Even if they were, I very much doubt if people back then would have regarded price control as you regard it, i e as "restraints on trade".
You are as bad when attributing positions to Chesterton as when attributing them to me. "In the one case, that institution was private property, in the other case, that institution was the illusive 'capitalism' never defined of coarse," - But he DID define it. He defined it as the kind of economy in which most of the capital is owned by a minority of the population and handed out to the rest mainly as wages to people who cannot dream of owning the company themselves.
Contrast Guilds, in which regulations limited number of employees, in which therefore each company being small the needs of the community of each branch was served by a pretty big number of companies, meaning that a pretty large part of the population were owning their companies. And since, under the guilds, they had previously been employees, known back then as journeymen, that meant employees had a hope of becoming owners if getting really good at the work.
You may argue that some branches are not capitalist but guild system in this distinction: I agree, so did Chesterton. And what is more, he never said everything was bad. He said inns were still good, but were better before brewery got big capitalist. He wanted to keep inns and return brewing to the guild system. Any microbrewery that opens is a boon to Chesterton.
"as definitions are pre-romanticism and therefore not traditionalist or groovy enough for distributists who are all about feelings, never doctrine." - Sorry, but your rudeness beats your own record of ignorance! First of all, if anything is about feelings and not about doctrine, it is not romanticism but enlightenment. Voltaire beats Ruskin any day in sentimental meandering without worrying about facts - and so do you.
As a second I was going to say it was wrong to put Ruskin in the same bag as .... Coleridge? .... because both are labelled Romantics. But by naming Ruskin I already said it.
"About a 'society of small owners' why should people be made to own who would rather not?" - Why indeed? And why do you presume that most non-owners would rather not own? Indeed, the kind of stress owners are put through in debts incurred before getting owners (inheritance duty does something to keep indebtment alive among owners), and by competition about the bankers' good-will and confidence, is discouraging enough, but that is one reason Distributists hate usury - which is clearly a very long-standing Church Teaching! - and no indication they would also hate being owners if that were feasible without mortgages. As was the case under guild system.
"The capitalist believes a firm's purpose is to serve the customer and that alone ought keep him afloat. The distributist believes the firms should be made to stay afloat for its own profits." - The Distributist believes that the fewer firms there are, the fewer people are in a real position to be customers. How many non-owning customers now are so only through dole from state or from consummation loans?
Yes, any one branch, a reduction of firms with a cheapening of production by use of machinery will serve the customers who are owners or employees in all the other branches, but if it happens in branch after branch, the mathematics are a bit different for that. Since it lowers considerably the number of real owners of productive property.
If Capitalism were so convenient for a Catholic life, how come so many of them donate to PP? See second quote on FB collected on this blog of mine:
http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2010/05/i-have-posted-quotes-on-fb.html
Here closeth part II, the debate on guilds. As far as blog message is concerned. Further comments on same status will go to comment parts of this blog post. God willing and wheather permitting./HGL
Explaining Holy Roman Empire in terms of comparing to US. - Pt I
RépondreSupprimerPart II, more on Guilds than on Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire explained for US, but we are heading back for Rome now, Pt III
On closing down of a lemonade stand in US ...
RépondreSupprimer- probably, under guilds, there were no little girls making lemonade stands in HRE. If one had tried, probably it would not have been allowed:
-- if there was a lemonade sellers guild (which there is not in US)
-- or since she was too young for running business OR
-- since she was an unmarried woman (compare female secretaries in US, which HRE had not);
- but a town or city authority could override the guild regulation;
- and girls selling lemonade are anyway about customary small business (yes, they are a custom in US, and I enjoy ice tea from those), a thing guilds were made to protect and the new regulations over there in this case are not protecting - or were not. I've got to reread end of article.
In the US, big or small companies are licensed by the state, under guilds - this did not apply on the countryside, since only towns contained sufficient number of non-agrarian colleagues to make a guild and thus only towns were directly under guilds, rural areas had no licensing problems - small companies were licensed by the small companies that were colleagues and the whole group had a contract with the town, abusing which their licensing could be dispensed with.
RépondreSupprimerIn towns, a cobblers daugher would much more probably be lacing the shoes her father was going to sell. A girl selling lemonades would still have been no anomaly if the father wass into the lemonade business. Mr Coca-Cola company, whoever that is, would not have been entitled to keep Coke recipe secret from all the world and produce his extract in uttermost secrecy in one place transporting it from there to everywhere else. He would, like the first apothecary who invented coke, be producing his goods on place and other producing similar goods elsewhere. But sure his daughter would have been entitled to sell lemonades, since she was her fathers daughter.
The lemonade selling children are a very nice feature of US towns in summer, if ever guilds came to US (they left England under Elizabeth Boleyn right back when Virginia and Maryland were being colonised) they would be as locally American or Kansan or Kansas Citadine as to accomodate that custom. If they came otherwise, they would not be guilds.
But the popularity of the phenomenon shows that probably a lot of parents would like to buy and sell on their own too, and cannot. Because governmental licensing requirements are made so that initial costs are insurmoutable without a loan.
When the little girl closed down, what were the thirsty people drinking instead? A locallly brewed beer? Or a coke produced at the other end of the Union?