A gentleman – with a name like Donald P. Goodman III, he must be a gentleman! – over at The Distributist Review has a fine article on the idea of subsidiarity.
For the record, I’m very much of the “Subsidiarity means the right action taken by the right authority as close to the problem as possible” school. I think the “Subsidiarity = smaller government, but bigger private enterprise is okay” school misses the point. The point is, subsidiarity is a principle that guards against any kind of collectivization – public or private – in order to keep the focus of society where it belongs: on actual human beings.
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You know what’s giving me a headache lately–the Distributist network is humming with this anti-Libertarian argument the past few days. Goodman and the other arguments emerging from them are creating a straw man, as these arguments usually do, particularly when an untried and underdeveloped economic theory is trying to go against an established one.
All of the arguments equate libertarianism with anarcho-capitalism which is about as straw man as you can get. Private enterprise is a human right listed in the catechism and the point of the libertarian view is NOT unfettered big business in violation of all individual rights. The libertarian view is that government interference COLLUDES with big business and ENCOURAGES a disproportionate development of enterprise.
So the point is limited government, in theory, will allow for the free market to naturally encourage plurality of development and more equal opportunity for growth. The fact that some businesses will naturally grow larger than others is unavoidable. That has to do with innovation and industriousness as much as it has to do with social inequity.
Now this is not an irrefutable point–but the burden of proof is on the The League of Extraordinary Distributists to demonstrate how specific increased regulations will not end up creating the monopolies the government is supposed to be policing.
Agribusiness comes to mind. Which John Medaille in April did a great job in theorizing through Aquinas, which is the kind of stuff I like to be seeing–the division between Thomist natural economy and the economy where money is the means and goal of enterprise. This lately libertarian stuff is irritating as heck. It is not well thoughtout or well argued at all but reactive. Like some libertarian got loose amongst their ranks and they are trying to expel him like a demon. Doesn’t sound like any libertarian I’ve ever met. It sounds like an anarcho-capitalist.
The law of subsidiarity indicates that federal regulation and state regulation are the last and second to last resorts in regulating any kind of free enterprise, which is listed in the CCC (2211) as a human right. Which is NOT saying that it should never be employed–abusus non tollit usus—just that it should be employed as sparingly as possible in order to encourage free enterprise. Free enterprise is the means to private property. Another basic human right.
So now we have Distributists arguing for the Net Neutrality laws arguing for federal control of distribution of content on the Internet for fear of a theoretical corporate monopoly that hasn’t even come close to occurring yet, or a two-tiered internet for the rich and poor. Which is about as anti-subisdarity as it gets. The point is to let first the free market provide the natural check and balance–which as the Internet is a rapidly evolving technology means there are periods of openness and period of fixity, where value is assigned. The point of the Internet has always been, just as soon as value is set, some kid in his basement blows the whole thing open again. You’ve got to give that a chance to work and keep working before you rush in with the Handicapper General making sure that no one content provider or service provider is better than anyones else. (Let’s just look at the freaking POST OFFICE to see how that works.)
Then you look at local authorities and the state level to developed their own rules and their own degree of level if the people feel that they are being unfairly “taxed” for access to the internet either as a producer or a consumer.
THEN if that completely fails it goes to the federal level.
Freaking GOOGLE is behind this latest Net Neutrality deal–does that raise any Distributist Eyeballs? Supposedly concerned about Big Business more than Big Government? NO. Which is precisely the POINT there is little distinction between BG and BB. They collude. The idea that BG works against BB is a cruel joke and a red herring.
What this all is is Keynesian economics being dressed up to look like Distributism–which has been Distributism’s peril. As a social ideal, grounded in theological principles, it doesn’t function so much as a workalbe economic theory as a check and balance against policy and x or policy y. A yardstick if you will. It COULD become some kind of workable practicum but not as long as people try to dress up either Keynes or Hayek and make him look like the Chesterbelloc.
Can you tell its bothering me? LOL.
Jennifer,
Yep. I can tell it’s bothering you.
I have to admit, though, most of what you said is way over my head. I know very little about distributism, and even less about libertarianism. I’m a political and economic ignoramus live-blogging my own self-education.
I don’t have my finger on the pulse of the distributist sub-culture, so I’m not following the arguments your mention at all. I know next to nothing about the net neutrality arguments, though from what little I’ve heard there are points worth considering on both sides.
In any case, the point I’m trying to make is that subsidiarity essentially boils down to right relationships between institutions – and that it applies just as much to private institutions as it does to governmental ones.
I’m in full agreement that private property and enterprise are basic human rights. I am guessing we agree that government and business in bed together is bad for human life and liberty, because it mixes up different institutional roles. The goal of subsidiarity, as I understand it, is to keep institutions focused on human goods and on a human scale.