Self-Employed

I don't think it was that easy for G.K. Chesterton to be self-employed. He seems to have had a difficult time with money-handling, book-keeping, record-keeping and such. He procrastinated his deadlines and never became rich. Although Frances didn't have to go to work, they had a gardener and a housekeeper and a cook, and so he obviously made an adequate living.

Today, in America, a person who is self-employed, and whether it's someone who is a sole proprietor or someone who has up to 100 employees (all considered by the government to be a "small" business), the endless paperwork can seem overwhelming. One might even think there might be a consipiracy to discourage small business.

Being one's own boss comes at a price. The price is keeping up with all of the government regulations, the paperwork, paying the taxes, (fees, fines, licenses and so forth are basically still taxes), and managing the headaches. But the upside is you are your own man (in the old fashioned sense of the word). Your own boss. The maker of your own fate. With God's help, of course.

Are you self-employed like Chesterton? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it?

Catholic Worker Info

Including links to YouTube videos of Dorothy Day. Fascinating historical stuff.

Reports of the Minneapolis Conference?

So far, I've only seen this, but would love to hear more about the conference last Saturday. Anyone go? If so, please leave us some thoughts in the combox. Thanks.

Chesterton in Romania

From Steve:

I have met the acquaintance of Mircea Platon a distributist scholar-journalist who hails from Romania. I think that in the interest of international networking he would be an excellent contact.

He has in correspondence written,

Dear Stephen, we are trying to build an alliance between "middle
America" and "deep Romania". In November we'll publish in Romania an
anthology of American, Italian, English, Romanian, and Australian
Distributist writers. Anti-corporate and anti-Communist all the way!

See also, http://workstation3.blogspot.com/2009/07/drama-architecture-art-and-grace-evelyn.html

http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=5288

Steve

Minnesota Chesterton Conference to Focus on Economic Crisis

Sounds interesting, take a look here. If you can't get to Seattle, maybe you can get to Minneapolis?

Distributism Does Not Mean Free Stuff

OK. That's settled. What, then, does distributism mean?

I'll tell you what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean two acres and a cow.

And it doesn't mean software should be free.

And it doesn't mean you should work and no one pays you for an honest day's work (i.e. meaning, you wouldn't be paid), even if the work you do it write software or even just write, for example, for the web. We are so used to free web stuff, we don't even realize how that cheapens all the information.

So, what does distributism really mean then?Class, discuss.

Captalist Socialist Distributist Conference Report

Dear friends of The Society for Distributism,

Photographs and a brief summary of last week's conference may be found here.

Many of you have asked if the conference was taped. The event was recorded, however we will inform all of you if and when this becomes available.

I want to thank each and every one of you for your prayers and support. The event was a success thanks to all of you. --Richard Aleman

Distributism Meeting in New York

CATHOLICISM AND ECONOMICS:
CAPITALIST-DISTRIBUTIST-SOCIALIST DEBATE
Garden City, NY, USA. A conference hosted and sponsored by the Nassau Community College Center for Catholic Studies in Long Island, New York, is confirmed for April 4th, 2009 at the College Center Building.

The debate will present and contrast the Capitalist, Socialist, and Distributist positions in economics. The Conference, Catholicism and Economics, will present and compare the intellectual arguments about the compatibility of Catholicism with, respectively, democratic socialism, democratic capitalism, and distributism. Read more.
Thomas Storck will speak for the distributist position. Dr. Charles Clark will be the speaker on democratic socialism. Michael Novak will be the main speaker for the democratic capitalist position.
From 11:30am until 12:30pm there will be a luncheon for all in attendance (speakers and audience) including sandwiches, salads, cake, coffee/tea/cold beverages. Following lunch, there will be a brief tribute to the recently deceased Catholic scholars, Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., and Msgr. Michael Wrenn. The debate will begin at 1pm with a half hour presentation by each participant. Subsequently, there will be an opportunity for the participants to respond critically to one another, with a brief summary statement made by each main speaker. Dr. Stephen M. Krason, President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, will close the event with a short reflection on the conference from the perspective of Heinrich Pesch and Solidarism. The event will conclude by 4:30pm.
Thomas Storck is an author, a member of the Editorial Board of the Chesterton Review and of The Society for Distributism.
Dr. Charles M.A. Clark is a Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance, Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John's University, Jamaica, Queens, New York.
Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C.
Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

All conference attendees must register. In order to register for the conference, contact:
Nassau Community College
Office of Life Long Learning
One Education Drive
Garden City, New York, 11530
1-516-572-7472.

The Office of Life Long Learning will send you registration material and a mandatory parking permit through the mail. Parking on campus without a valid permit could result in being issued a parking ticket. Those lost on campus and in need of directions to the College Center Building can contact the Office of Public Safety, 1-516-572-7100.

Chestertonian Explanation of the Fall of AIG

From Paul Cella, on the Red State Blog:

G. K. Chesterton, demonstrating his genius at the art of paradox, once referred to optimism as “morbid.” Since the moment I read that (it appears in the second chapter of The Everlasting Man, I have felt in my bones that it is true, and have accordingly nurtured a healthy repugnance for the braggarts of optimism. But as with many paradoxes... Read more ...it is difficult to explain without vitiating its power to surprise and thus enlighten. A true paradox is not a mere turn of phrase, a linguistic subtlety. It is attempt to fill a gap in man’s power of understanding. It is a rhetorical reach, a heuristic device to explain what is in the end a mystery to our meager powers of mind. The paradox is a human reflection of the mystery of being.

So in the hands of a master like Chesterton, the paradox becomes an instrument of extraordinary explanatory power. It can show us, as in a flash, a principle or precept which might by other means requires hours of lecture to impart. (There is an obscure masterpiece, long out of print, called Paradox in Chesterton, by a critic named Hugh Kenner, which lays all this out with great elegance. It ends with the astonishing claim for GKC that he be called a Doctor of the Church; and more astonishing still, the reader finds himself convinced.)

In this case of the problem of optimism, Chesterton’s paradox opened my mind’s eye to the surprising truth that optimism, being so engrossed with the potential for good things, courts ruin and despair by minimizing bad things — or, in the parlance of finance, by minimizing the downside risk. Especially when abetted by the modern doctrine of progress, optimism is morbid because of its tendency to induce blindness concerning man’s limitations.

Now I have a concrete, factual illustration of the problem of optimism, right in front of everyone’s eyes.

As I understand it, AIG was basically ruined by the wild bets of a 300-man unit out of London, the Financial Products office. This 300-man operation lost the equivalent of a big state’s budget and more, all by themselves. [Click here to read it all.]

Social Justice and the Family

This writer sounds positively Chestertonian:

The bottom line is that big government solutions have failed those they purport to help. "What has happened over the years, I think, is the failure of successive governments to recognize that poverty isn’t just the absence of money," says Mr. Duncan Smith. "You need to look at what causes people to fall into poverty."

As a bonus, measures like the ones implemented in the UK also make sense financially. One recent UK study estimates the financial cost of family breakdown there is about 66 billion dollars annually. Helping the poor and less privileged while saving precious public dollars ought to appeal to most Canadians.

The vision presented by Mr. Duncan Smith and his fellow UK Conservatives is one for a better community. There’s an opportunity here for North America’s conservatives—understanding that strong families are the way toward a smaller government—and greater freedom. Who knew social issues (properly understood) were the way toward fiscal responsibility?

Pope Preparing Economic Letter: Chesterton

According to the Vatican Insider, the Pope is preparing a social encyclical about the global economic crisis and the Church's ideas about the economy. From the article:

We also note the contribution of Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936, photo left), one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century. Chesterton championed the economic theory of "Distributism." Distributism is a "third-way" economic philosophy (between or beyond capitalism and communism/socialism) formulated primarily by Chesterton and his friend, Hilaire Belloc, to apply the principles of Catholic social teaching in the early 20th century.

According to distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (indirect socialism) or a few large businesses or wealthy private individuals (capitalism). A summary of distributism is found in Chesterton's statement: "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists."

While socialism allows no individuals to own productive property (it all being under state, community, or workers' control), and capitalism allows only a few to own it, distributism seeks to ensure that most people will become owners of productive property.

47 Minute Primer on Money: Money as Debt on YouTube

It is a five part series, this is the first one, when you are finished, it will show you two choices of videos to watch next, click on "Money as Debt 2/5" and keep going till you watch it all. It is quite fascinating, and seems accurate, but I'm not a banker or an economist. Still, there's a lot of common sense in it, so it rings true.

Dale on the Radio Tonight

This is from Richard:

This evening, Jeremiah Bannister, host of Paleocrat Radio (broadcast from Olivet College), will be interviewing Dale Ahlquist, President of the American Chesterton Society. We hope you will tune in and listen to this exciting broadcast. Dale will no doubt talk about the life and works of our beloved Chesterton, as well as touch upon his distributist thinking.

The program begins at 6pm EST, and you can listen to it here: http://wocrfm.com (Internet Explorer users only). Jeremiah also wishes to convey that the phone lines will be open for questions starting at 6:20pm EST, so please call 269-749-7398, and ask Dale a question about distributism. Remember to email your friends and let them know to tune in and call the show.

--
Servire Deo regnare est!

Richard Aleman
Director
The Society for Distributism

Chesterton, Obama and Economics

Blog post by Mark Nielsen, which is interesting.

Society for Distributism holds meeting

CATHOLICISM AND ECONOMICS
CAPITALIST-DISTRIBUTIST-SOCIALIST DEBATE


Garden City, NY, USA. A conference hosted and sponsored by the Nassau Community College for Catholic Studies in Long Island, New York, is confirmed for April 4th, 2009 at the College Center Building. The debate will present and contrast the Capitalist, Socialist, and Distributist positions in economics. The Conference, Catholicism and Economics, will present and compare the intellectual arguments about the compatibility of Catholicism with, respectively, democratic socialism, democratic capitalism, and distributism.

Thomas Storck will speak for the distributist position. Dr. Charles Clark will be the speaker on democratic socialism. Michael Novak will be the main speaker for the democratic capitalist position.

From 11:30pm until 12:30pm there will be a luncheon for all in attendance (speakers and audience) including sandwiches, salads, cake, coffee/tea/cold beverages. Following lunch, there will be a brief tribute to the recently deceased Catholic scholars, Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J., and Msgr. Michael Wrenn. The debate will begin at 1pm with a half hour presentation by each participant. Subsequently, there will be an opportunity for the participants to respond critically to one another, with a brief summary statement made by each main speaker. Dr. Stephen M. Krason, President of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, will close the event with a short reflection on the conference from the perspective of Heinrich Pesch and Solidarism. The event will conclude by 4:30pm.

Thomas Storck is an author, a member of the Editorial Board of the Chesterton Review and of The Society for Distributism.

Dr. Charles M.A. Clark is a Professor in the Department of Economics and Finance, Peter J. Tobin College of Business, St. John's University, Jamaica, Queens, New York.

Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute of Washington, D.C.

Stephen M. Krason is Professor of Political Science and Legal Studies at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.

All conference attendees must register. In order to register for the conference, contact:

Nassau Community College
Office of Life Long Learning
One Education Drive
Garden City, New York, 11530
1-516-572-7472.

The Office of Life Long Learning will send you registration material and a mandatory parking permit through the mail. Parking on campus without a valid permit could result in being issued a parking ticket. Those lost on campus and in need of directions to the College Center Building can contact the Office of Public Safety, 1-516-572-7100.

For more information, contact Richard Aleman
The Society for Distributism

Christmas? Think about shopping locally

With the Chestertonianly paradoxical name of American Independent Business Alliance, but with the Chestertonian ideals of shopping locally, and supporting local owner/operators, I recommend looking here to encourage you to shop locally this Christmas.

Debate: Chesterton vs. Obama

Here they debate economics. Quite interesting!

Speaking of Economics and Politics...

Does anyone else feel like we're all in kindergarten, and some kids got out of line, and the teacher makes everyone stay in from recess; while the principal bails out the misbehaving kids, gets them out of trouble— but the rest of us still have to stay inside as a punishment for the bad kids?

We've worked really hard to live against the norm. We paid off our home mortgage. We don't buy cars until we can pay for them. We have credit cards but we limit them, and pay them off each month. In other words, contrary to the country, we aren't in debt, and we even save money. We gave our government "economic stimulus" check (doesn't that seem a farce now?--of course, it did then, as well) back to the government by paying our property taxes with it.

When we went to the bank, they wanted to give us a bigger home loan, but we refused. We had to be the mature adults and tell the bank where to go with their big loans and high interest rates. But apparently, there are quite a few Americans who fall for those big numbers, and think banks know what they're doing. Now we know they don't. But why should we all have to pay for their mistakes?

American Agrarian Literature

I believe the distributists among us would enjoy this interesting post and listing of distributist/agrarian books to read.

Distributism Discussion in St. Louis

A Social Justice Collaborative will take place Thursday-Saturday, Aug. 7-9, at St. Francis de Sales Oratory, 2653 Ohio Ave. in South St. Louis.The event is being sponsored by the Catholic Central Verein (Union) of America in St. Louis in conjunction with the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice in Arlington, Va.

Many more details here, and here, and I hope some of you can attend and report back.