Catholic Economics for the 21st Century
Distributism often has poor economic reasoning behind it, but it also posits important points about the role of economies in a just society.
The Fifties: Catholic Paradise Lost?
Memory is a tricky thing, and historical memory can be trickier. For example, to many Catholic Americans, the 1950s look like a golden age of innocence, when life—especially church life—looked like a series of Norman Rockwell and Harold Anderson illustrations. As with all such reminiscences, it is not entirely inaccurate. Certainly America’s Catholics benefited alongside … Read more
It’s Time for a Jubilee
“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to … Read more
The Prophets of Post-Humanism
Andrew Yang is a man ahead of his time. Mark my words: within our lifetime, his ominous-sounding “Freedom Dividend—basically a universal basic income, or UBI—will become a plank of at least one of our two major political parties. And how could it be otherwise? Mr. Yang argues (correctly) that the developed world is going through … Read more
Are American Monarchists Dreamers?
One of the commentators on a recent Crisis article of mine declared that “Charles Coulombe is a weird person who desires the destruction of democracy and its replacement with monarchy again. There is a bizarre thread in Crisis now that desires such stupid stuff.” I suppose I am a weird person, so I can’t disagree … Read more
On John Crowe Ransom’s Newly Discovered Agrarian Classic
In 1930, “Twelve Southerners” published a thick volume of essays entitled I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. Led by the already venerable poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, the contributors responded, at once, to the increasing industrialization of the southern states over the previous few decades, the sudden trials of the … Read more
What is Distributism? A Controversial Alternative to Socialism and Plutocracy
Distributism is the name given to a socio-economic and political creed originally associated with G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Chesterton bowed to Belloc’s preeminence as a disseminator of the ideas of distributism, declaring Belloc the master in relation to whom he was merely a disciple. “You were the founder and father of this mission,”Chesterton … Read more
The Dorothy Day Few of Us Know
She lamented the encroachment of the state and the perils of the welfare system. She once compared abortion to genocide and the U.S. government to Nazi Germany. She cheered on income tax resisters, dismissed the benefits of the minimum wage, and worried about the decline of freedom in an increasingly bureaucratic society. But this was … Read more
There Is No Third Way
Catholic discussion of economic policy usually takes place on a ridiculous level of abstraction. What is fairness, and can the market accomplish that? Shouldn’t the civic order bear responsibility for the health and well-being of its members? How can we balance the demands of social equality and individual ownership? These are all very high-minded questions, … Read more
Capitalist? Socialist? Distributist.
Small is beautiful. Or, the bigger the business, the bigger the bailout. Congress has promised over $1 trillion from our hands to “rescue” gargantuan businesses. When corporations demand the largest free ride in our history, it’s time to rethink economies of scale. Socialism is a silly solution — there, everything becomes one gargantuan business. We … Read more