I am new to this, and I am trying to explore different ideologies. I understand that distribution gives more power to the people rather than the state, but that is all I know.

What does economics look in a world dominated with distributism, and how advanced would society be with it?

Hello, r/distributism!

I wanted to get a genuine opinion from people who both know and care about this subject.

Currently, Romania is having a presidential election, done in two rounds - the first round has finished.

The top candidate for the first round (and therefore possible winner of the seat after the second round) is one Călin Georgescu. A complete independent who campaigned nigh-exclusively on TikTok, his victory was a major shock for basically everyone.

Previously an agricultural expert working in various national and international positions representing Romania, the man is mostly known for his far-right, ultranationalistic and pro-Russian views. What I want to ask you, however, is about his unique economic policies: he claims to be a distributist.

I will translate the relevant parts of his manifesto (https://calingeorgescu.ro/program/), and let you be the judge:

„(I) DISTRIBUTISM

Distributism (economic participative democracy) entails spreading welfare on a large scale through encouraging, supporting and generalizing small and medium-sized productive properties and forms of association.

Its practical realisation is done through a set of public policies and measures coherently articulated and meant to create and develop popular banks, production and distribution cooperatives, enterprises with worker-owners, peer production, proper cadastre.

Widely distributed productive property guarantees a healthy economic mechanism: workers own their land, equipment and abilities and therefore have control over their own destiny.

Developing small and medium-sized productive properties (not of speculative property!) encourages and consolidates a feeling of communion, equality and liberty, because it offers the citizen a chance to become an owner-producer, namely a person truly dignified and free, whose well-being depends only on themselves and their cooperation with their peers.

In time the effect would be a wide spreading of economic power, creation of real wealth, for use by families and communities.

Only small and medium-sized property can being back liberty, a cult of honor and work! Because it is the sole means for the common person to exit slavery and gain material autonomy in safety and with dignity.”

„3. An economy of liberty and public good, though the sovereignist-distributist model

Legislative and fiscal measures which would make the transition from an economic system interested solely in extractive investments (extraction to depletion of energies contained in the soil, underground, water, plants, animals and people) towards an economy of the common good, meant to protect nature, ensure liberty and satisfy the needs of the people, through a system of production and wide distribution of the fruits of labour.

Small and medium-sized properties must be encouraged, protected and supported as a priority.

We will not deal with a nanny state that will egalitarianly distribute wealth via a socialist model, but a wide spreading of productive forms of association (over the earth, tools, educational resources) and through easy access to cheap capital.

Sovereignist-distributist Romania's economic success will be mainly based on:
– capitalizing the small producer
– supporting local markets
– encouraging and defending new forms of productive properties (such as people's banks, cooperatives)
– improving enterprises' governance, of micro- and macroeconomic management
– peasant's agriculture, apiculture, innovative sectors and green industries, as locomotives of sustainable development and health
– minimum 51% state participation in everything related to natural resource exploitation on Romania's territory.”

All translation errors are, of course, my own. You can check the auto-translation of the source if you believe I have been unfair.

There are a few more portions of relevance, such as larger taxes for over one million euros of income, subsidiarity, bringing trade schools back to relevance, a focus on food, water, bees, waste, general concern for the small producer, and others. I encourage you to read the manifesto for more details (though please remember that this is the vision of one man, wholly unrepresentative of economic views of the majority of Romania).

Some notes:

- Romania is more than a third rural.

- The Romanian presidency is awkwardly between the French/American style (real executive power) and the German style (figurehead). That said, what Mr. Georgescu wishes to do is impossible from his possible future post, by himself and likely through the prime-minister he will have to accept from the winning party/parties.

- He is wholly independent (though some miniscule parties are scrambling to support him). While he will obviously exert influence, he has no basis of distributist economists/politicians/experts/voters to pull from.

- The Romanian press and various economists have dismissed his economic ideology as autarchy and detached from European realities (Romania is in the EU). Corporations and general businessmen are terrified.

- Despite the ecological bent of some of his positions, the man does not believe in climate change and left the Club of Rome because they "sold out". Make of that what you will.

In closing, I wish to ask you: What do you think? Would you consider this real distributism? Why (not)? Does the prospect of a distributist head of state excite you (I would be for my pet ideology of Georgism)? What are your hopes for a possible presidency by this man?

I am asking out of curiosity, not out of a wish to smear anyone, which is why I have left my personal opinions out of this and have seprated his economic views from his social views (I would appreciate the same from any responders, if you wish to, of course). Seeing small ideologies be represented in real life always brings me a small amount of joy, as my first thought is nearly always "I am happy someone wants to try this out" :)

As the title suggests I am new to distributist thought. I have found myself interested in the ideology but have a few questions about it. I was hoping for reccomendations of literatures or content creators that cover the ideology so i can further delve into distributist thought

Distributing capital has its merits, but how would a Distributist system handle people who don't want to own capital, with the delayed gratification that comes with it? Doubtless, there are many people who would sell or mortgage any assets they get their hands on so they spend the money now, even though having some capital would benefit them more in the long term. It's the same reason that many people live paycheck to paycheck today, even carrying debt, though they have expensive hobbies and could afford to save if they would be willing to defer gratification.

As a Marxist Distributist, I believe limited market socialism offers the best way to combine the ideals of social justice and widespread ownership. By fostering worker cooperatives, small family businesses, and individually owned enterprises, we can prevent wealth from concentrating in the hands of a few, while empowering people to take ownership of their labor. Markets can serve a role here, offering room for competition and innovation on a smaller scale, but they must be carefully regulated to avoid monopolies and prevent exploitation. For larger, essential industries, I believe in collective or municipal ownership so that these resources are accountable to the public rather than to private interests.

Limited market socialism, for me, isn’t the end goal; it’s a stepping stone toward a society that values cooperation over profit and social welfare over individual gain. By implementing wealth taxes, profit-sharing, and fair wages, we can dismantle exploitation and create a system that rewards labor fairly. I envision this evolving into a cooperative economy that embodies both local autonomy and mutual aid, a society where resources are distributed equitably, and people feel a real stake in their work and their communities. This approach, I believe, perfectly combines the Distributist respect for personal property with the Marxist dedication to social ownership and class equity, building a fairer, more humane world.

Like factories, power plants, and mines, who would live in those environments? Especially for stuff that has a strict code of conduct, since I'm not sure how regular teaching is supposed to work and that's for high school math instead of rocket science.

I understand that production is supposed to be people having resources and property, but what about services? Like theme parks or education? I guess monetary theory could handle theme parks but what would prevent colleges from costing so much money?

Greetings!

I'm fairly new to the concept of distributism but consider myself a traditionalist so I'm interested in Chesterton and, in turn, distributism. I acknowledge this might come across as a silly question but how does buying land look like in distributism? If the point is to equitably distribute the land, wouldn't buying land necessarily impede on that idea?
Also, if there are some quality sources I can take a look at on the topic of distributism, I would appreciate it if someone could link it below.

Thank you all in advance!

And president FDR in general, I’m asking as a liberal.

Capitalism has been the dominant economic system for hundreds of years, and it has brought us great prosperity and wealth. Why would we want to change that?

https://christiandale.no/blog/the-wisdom-of-wealth-on-distributism

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act is a bill currently being debated in the U.S.A. that would (among other things) amend the National Labor Relations Act to define an employee as follows:

SEC. 101. Definitions.

(b) Employee.—Section 2(3) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 152(3)) is amended by adding at the end the following:“An individual performing any service shall be considered an employee (except as provided in the previous sentence) and not an independent contractor, unless—

“(A) the individual is free from control and direction in connection with the performance of the service, both under the contract for the performance of service and in fact;

“(B) the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer; and

“(C) the individual is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business of the same nature as that involved in the service performed.”.

According to Reuters

The law would, among other measures, reclassify many independent contractors as employees for the purpose of collective bargaining, though not for wage laws and benefits.

I am trying to be neutral and I encourage people to read both sides of the argument.

Thoughts?

By legally mandating ESOPs? Or maybe just encouraging ESOPs? Or do you want to convert all business corporations today to worker co-operatives? And how would you do that?

A youtuber by the name of Lavader has been doing a political ideology knock out game on his community posts and it is down to the final 2, Distributism vs Pinochetism. Thought I would share in case anyone wants to vote. (Not sure if this breaks R1/R6 but the cause is too important not to try.)

https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxlZab3OjW2kK68-3-OQRanMlHsx_fzmq1

How would you write a Distributist Constitution? What amendments, rights and promises would you make within it?

I see it online sometimes, but there is little information on it aside from a political satire website.

If larger businesses are broken down into more local parts, what would happen to businesses that need to be huge? I understand they would usually be broken down into a co-operative, but would that even be profitable for the individual parts? Furthermore, would the airlines be named entirely locally due to their inability to expand further?

Thanks in advance.

If all of the productive assets are owned widely, then how will the workers decide to run the business? What if they disagree over different questions? What if the workers simply aren't even skilled enough to manage a business, then what? The only way this could work is through some sort of democratic system, but that still doesn't fix any of the aforementioned issues.

https://distributistreview.com/archive/distributism-and-taxation

Do you agree with it? And would you apply it to all businesses, considering that, as many here have admitted, certain large-scale businesses are necessary (pharmaceuticals, airlines, etc.)?

I'd been asking a lot about big business lately because while I agree with Distributism on 99% of things, one of the things that I don't love is its relation to large businesses. I do want more small firms, but the capitalist in me understands its good for a healthy economy to have them, so I think it's fine for (very) large companies like Microsoft to exist granted they are worker owned in some way and don't buy up other businesses or violate anti-trust laws. To my understanding Distrubutists only tolerate large businesses if they have to be large to exist (like an airline). Was curious what Distrubutists think about this, thank you.

One thing I disagree with Distributism on (I think) is big business. If one were to have an employee-owned business that didn't buyout other companies, how would it be decided when it's broken up? Would it need to reach a certain size, and/or would it be because the company started engaging in too many actives outside of its core business? (like engaging in every industry like Samsung). Or how does that work? Thank you.