Distributism is the idea that the means of production should be as widely decentralized as possible (as in workers own their own tools and land to produce goods) in order to make men independent from the control of megacorporations or the state. We have all seen state and megacorporations (looking at you big tech) use their power to make the rest of us less free and more dependent on them. Why is there no large scale movement to make the common man master of his own fate through co-ops, homesteads, or microfactories? Are we doomed to choose between socialism and capitalism? One tyrannical system or another? Distributists of /pol/, how can we break into the mainstream?
>>526192056What can you actually do to support this movement short of making stuff cheaper somehow?
I'll go ahead and share my hypothesis. Most distributists over romanticize the homestead and they don't give the same love to the microfactory. Much of the modern world relies on technology and we can't just go back to living on farms. We will need factories and scientists in distributists world and we need to have a vision for them.
>>526192292I'm just one guy, but what I am working on is various small scale processes and materials that can be manufactured at the cottage scale. Pic related it is aerial mycelium that can be processed into mushroom leather. You can grow this stuff in a closet.
>>526192292Raising awareness for the idea could also help. Not a lot of people even know what distributism is.
>>526192690What really is it other than having a lot of access to a lot of stuff?
>>526192984You don't have to have access to a lot of stuff. You just have to be able to provide for yourself. Maybe that looks like 3 acres and a cow. Maybe it's 3d printers and a house.
>>526193171Well I can't possibly provide all the stuff I want for myself. The biggest hurdle is that I have nowhere near enough money to buy even half the stuff I would need to produce the stuff I want.
>>526192601if you breathe it will it start growing in ur lungs
>>526193376What would you want to produce?
>>526192056That is literally socialism you fucking retard. But I'm proud you realize the core tenet of socialism is based and better for society
>>526193486No. It's just the mycelium.
Decentralization of this sort makes it harder to implement economies of scale, leading to less output overall
>>526193536No socialism is where the land and the tools are collectively owned. Distributism is when the individual workers actually own what they need to support themselves. It is the ideology of decentralization and small business.
>>526193521Frankly I don't really care who produces it but I'm taking up your position for the moment so we'll assume I want to produce it myself.This laptop that I'm using to type this message is a good example. I'm not even quite sure where I would start in building one of these but I'm sure I don't have the funds.
>>526193634Yeah that is a valid criticism, but is more mass produced substandard shit designed to fail really worth our freedom and individual agency? And while distributism may be less efficient it is potentially more adaptable. A large oil refinery can take years and millions of dollars to adjust a process meanwhile a bioreactor just needs a new batch of organisms to produce something new.
>>526193744Semi conductors would certainly be difficult to make in a decentralized economy, but Rome wasn't built in a day and neither will distributism. Co-ops might be the solution for computers at least until something can replace photolithography.
>>526192056>We have all seen state and megacorporations (looking at you big tech) use their power to make the rest of us less free and more dependent on them.To me this is not the most compelling reason for distributing. Sure they're jerks but there's no rule which states jerks should never be in charge or are always bad rulers. Why should you be free or less dependent? Distribution has direct competitive benefits for the nation state over centralization. Anyone who's worked at a big company knows how the need for consensus grinds the ability to act, and especially to adapt, down to a halt. Distributing ownership allows for a laboratory of economics the same way that different states were intended to create a laboratory of democracy.Distributed economics also reduces rot. "Too big to fail" institutions become immune to the need to cut down on corruption, which in turn means that when they inevitably fall they create disaster. "Too small to stay around long" is much more viable at the end stage, there is renewal. Distributed networks are also redundant, which creates resilience. If 500,000 people all depend on one power plant, that makes it easier to knock out power than if only 500 people rely on the same source. So on for every other sector of human need.The main downside of distributism is that it makes it very difficult to become a billionaire who's completely insulated from any possibility of permanent failure. Make of that what you will.
Holy shit. Distributism thread on /pol/.
>>526194125I'm aware that it's difficult. Acknowledging that difficulty via half a platitude does absolutely nothing to resolve the problem.
>>526194301What need is there to resolve the problem? Just let the big corpo keep doing it until you can replace them. Ideological purity is for blue checkmarks.
>>526194543>What need is there to resolve the problem?Well if there is no need then it's not really a problem which is kind of my point.
Because your fucking government brainwashed you for 80 years communism was bad. What you described here is what Karl Marx wrote in the communist manifesto in 1848. He invited all workers of the world including the US workers. It was never a movement against you but against your establishment.
>>526194301The solution is co-ops and r&d into alternatives to photolithograph. That is going to take time an man power. If society is to transition to a distributist economy it would have to be a gradual transition with help from a lot of scientists.
>>526194785What co-op do you imagine will produce laptops? And how much would I have to pay?
>>526194718Marxist want to abolish the family unit and private property. Fuck Marxist. On top of that the overwhelming majority of marxists in the west are antiwhite and I'm not about to throw my hat in with people who hate me.
>>526192323>We will need factories and scientistsWhy? We didn't have them for the first 300,000 years.
>>526193536You would do well to read The Hound of Distributism to clarify the distinction between distributism and socialism. Easy read, G.K. Chesterton is a delight to read, if a little dense.>>526193634This is acceptable if the overall result is more families owning land and being productive with it. Distributism welcomes agrarian compromise.>>526194718Distributists have read Marx. Marxists have not read Chesterton. Take that first step.
>>526194884I don't think it would be a single co-op. One to mine the silica sand one to make the 11N silicon ingots one to make the chips ect. Just replace the mega corporations with worker co-ops and it would probably cost a little more as the workers would be paid better
>>526192056Distributism sounds interesting, but personally I think the way of the future is AI-powered Georgism. Georgism solves all the problems we'll be having as more jobs are fully automated with AI, and the problems of Georgism, like calculating & maintaining accurate land value assessments, are trivialized with AI-human collaboration.
>>526194940Because a lot of people will die without modern agriculture and medicine and because we should be trying to get off this rock.
>>526195077Georgism is pretty based
>>526195075That's already how it works from my perspective, just with a different business structure to the companies involved which I'm not privy to anyway, plus an increased cost to me.It doesn't much feel like I'm providing for myself in that scenario any more than I am now.
>>526195506In a co-op you would have more leverage than with a regular boss as you would be a partial owner of the company.
>>526192056>be me>18>don't know what to do with life so I find work on a construction site>oops you need to spend 80k on tools if you want to work here
>>526194297What are your thoughts on >>526192323
>>526192056How is this different from ancap?
>>526195963I don't think I'd have time to work in a mining co-op and a silicon processing co-op and a chip manufacturing co-op even if I had all the skills.But even if I did, what do I care about leveraging anyone if I can't use that leverage to lower my own costs?
>>526196050You would start with an apprenticeship and you would not need 80k worth of tools to start
>>526192056This is a simple cost/analysis problem.Building a factory is expensive.Transporting goods is cheap.Scaling a factory is cheap.Scaled factories produce at economies of scale.The most important economy of scale is regulation dodging. A large producer can simply ignore one nation's disgusting, degenerate concepts of 40 hour work weeks and PTO, building their factory in a dystopian slave pit hell hole, and pocket 100% of the cost savings.Therefore, microfactories don't make sense. They are out competed by hyper specialized giga factories and international crime rings.
>>526196126You would only work for one of them and because leverage ensures you aren't tossed on your ass.
>>526196191>you would not need 80k worth of tools to startThat really really depends on what you are doing. Also apprenticeships are just free labor.
>>526192323>3D printers and a house3D printers take hours, sometimes days to create a single part, all while emmiting toxic fumes. If you keep it running in your house all the time (which you would have to), you will not live to become a grandfather. There's a more pressing issue though. It just wouldn't work. 3 acres and a cow could have worked because a household that owned those means could live off of the fruits of the worker's labor directly. Those fruits being food. But if you're trying to subsist off of a 3D printer (or any other small scale production machine for that matter), you would first have to sell the product you created in exchange for money, with which you could then bring food on the table. This assumes that your product would be accepted for sale by the market. But how would you win in the market if every other household is producing the same stuff as yours is?
>>526196336You're talking about job security now which is really beside the point.If I'm only a miner then how am I providing the laptop for myself? I have some small hand in making it but I'm dependent on countless others, just like now.And what about the stuff I want that doesn't involve mining, like a refreshing beer for when I get home from the mines? I can't also own the brewery, can I? (Actually I could right now if it's publicly traded but IDK if the stock market exists in distributionism)
>>526196569Ideally different households would produce different goods.
>>526196704>Hoping for ideal scenarios Communists made that mistake, look where it got them lol
>>526196672Somethings require multiple people to make and sure not everyone will be owning their own business. The idea is to make as many people into owners as possible to make society as free as possible.
>>526196704People don't produce industrial items at home because most industrial processes will kill everyone in your household. That's why industry is forced away from residences.
>>526197120It would still be a market economy and it isn't like people only have 3d printers as an option.
>>526197232Uhh yeah some households would have a lathe instead and then the emergency ward would be buttfucked with work.
>>526197208You wouldn't have to produce it at home. You could produce the goods at a microfactory owned by you or you and a couple of your buddies.
>>526197392Kiln, microfoundry, bioreactor, distillation column, cnc machines, injection molder, mushroom cultivation tents, ect
>>526197163Well I can currently own stock in a ton of different companies and I don't have to work for them to do so. I'd love to own more of everything but then again so would everyone else.
>>526197232How is it different from ancap then?
>>526197974The state still exists and enforces wealthcaps.
>>526197497Couple dozen technologies spread accross millions of households. Very low chance that you, as a DIY CNC operator for example, would outcompete millions of other DIY CNC operators. (Not to mention that one CNC machine costs more than a house.) This all reminds me of when some techbro bragged on xitter about how he created his own small business using random AI tools at home. He then stated that in the future everybody would be well-off because everyone would be able to make their own little online business from home. The problem in that scenario is that if everyobody were to be a small entrepreneur, there would be a lack of clients and therefore lack of demand for the operation of all those imagined businesses. Same shit here but with hardware. I just don't see that kind of distributist order being possible as long as the market is needed as a middleman to reach subsistence. With 3 acres and a cow, that wouldn't be a problem.
>>526192056the right doesn't want to redistribute property equitably, at all, under any circumstances — those crucifixes they wear may have fooled some people
>>526196052I want to answer in depth but I'm out at the pub and on my phone. Somebody who truly knows distributism needs to elaborate on the distributist idea of guilds. I think it will satisfy your concerns on the microfactory. Id love to ramble at you but im a little fucked.
>>526192056>Are we doomed to choose between socialism and capitalism? The means of production can either be in the hands of the many or in the hands of the few. That is the economic dialectic. Distributists, being on the many side, are socialistic.
>>526198202To add to that, do you know how much technical knowledge is required to operate each of those technologies? And you think that the common denominator could pull it off? Look up the obesity rate of the country you would try to pull this off in lol
>>5261920561. Power concentrates. Iron Law of Oligarchy. Distributism is fundamentally naive and prioritises moral preference over realism.2. Modern production is not artisanal. Distributism no longer makes sense in the 21st century.3. It has no mechanism to enforce itself. If you remove both capital and the state there is no commanding force to coordinate the whole. tldr it is fake third positionism.Both socialism and capitalism belong to a liberal political dialectic and the only true alternative is fascism
Bump for a profound solution to our modern social and economic crisis.
