The Agrarian's Lament: Where have all the local businesses gone? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 6.

The Agrarian's Lament: Where have all the local businesses gone? Addressi...: Movie poster for And Quiet Flows the Don . What on earth does this have to do with anything?  Well, maybe more than you might figure, as the...

Where have all the local businesses gone? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 6.

Movie poster for And Quiet Flows the Don. What on earth does this have to do with anything?  Well, maybe more than you might figure, as the main character is a local Cossack trying to live a local, and not always all that admirable, life but ends up getting carried away with the tied of events which destroyes all of that.

Donald Trump reportedly just can't grasp why average Americans don't think the economy is doing great.  It's doing great for everyone he knows.  It's doing great for the the Trump family.  It's doing swell for Jeff Bezos.  It's doing great for Elon Musk.  It's only not doing great for his pal Jeff Epstein, as he checked out before he could be spring from jail in one fashion or another and go back to being a teenage girl procurer.

So what, he must be thinking, is the freaking problem?

Well, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the entire Trump family are the problem (and people like Jeff Epstein are as well).

In other quarters people like to debate whether or not the United States is a "Christian nation". Whatever the answer to that might be (I think the answer is yes, but that it's a Puritan country) it was definitely a small freeholder country.  That is, the country was mostly made up of small yeomanry and small tradesmen early on.

Indeed, the widespread use of corporations was illegal in the 1770s and for many years thereafter.  Part of the rebellion against the crown was based on what effectively were export duties, a species of tariff, on chartered businesses, i.e., team importers, that the colonist had no control over and they reacted by destroying the property.  Ironically the very people who emblazon themselves with 1776 themed tattoos in 2026 would have supported King George III doing what he did, just as they support King Donny doing them through executive order.  Shoot, Parliament had actually voted on the tea duties.

Nonetheless, teh country has always had some very large business interests that, when allowed to, operate against the economic interest of everyone else.  They don't want to "share the wealth".  They think their getting wealthy is sharing enough, and good for everyone.  Up until 1865, or instance, we had the Southern planter class, a market set of agriculturalist who destroyed land and people in their endeavors, but believed in it so strongly that they'd argue for the perversion of the Christian faith to support slavery.

It wasn't just Planters, however.  Coal magnates, industrialists, foreign ranch owners, the list is pretty long.

It wasn't until later that absentee merchants dominated "main street", both the actual one or the metaphorical one.  The first chain store is claimed by some to be The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which was founded in 1859.  Woolworth's started twenty years later in 1879.  Piggly Wiggly, the grocery store, showed up in 1916, and proved to be the model for "grocery stores" that would wipe out locally held grocery stores, for the most party, in  the next couple of decades.

Since the mid 20th Century this trend has continued unabated and unaddressed.  Every Walmart represents the destruction, probably, of a half dozen or more locally owned family supported stores.  The appliance section represents the closure of local appliance stores.  The entertainment section of record and video stores.  You name it.

None of this had to be.

There's been a lot of ink spilled on the rise of Donald Trump and what caused it. We've done that ourselves.  Others have noted the presence of small businessmen in the MAGA ranks, but it's been underreported in contrast to the blue collar Rust Belt members of the MAGA rank and file.

It shouldn't be.

When I was young, which is now a very long time ago, the Democratic Party was still regarded as the part of the working class.  Unions, which have never been strong here, were still strong enough to host the annual Jefferson Jackson Day that backed the Democratic Party.  But by 1973 the Democrats started to board the vessel of blood that would end up causing thousands to get off the boat.  By the mid 1990s the party that had been the one hardhats joined became one in you had to be comfortable with a focus on disordered sex and infanticide.  The Democrats, for the most part, forgot the working class.

At the same time, the Republican Party was widely accused of being the Country Club Party, with good reason.  If you were a member of a country club or chamber of commerce, you were probably a Republican or you were weird.  The thing is, however that the economic outlook of the hardhat class and the country club class was closer to each other than they thought and the same neglect hurt both of them severely.

As early as the 1960s, successive Democratic and Republican administrations were really comfortable with exporting business overseas.  Nobody ever outright admitted that, but they were.  And both Democratic and Republican administrations simply stopped enforcing anti trust legislation.  Aggressively applied, entities like Walmart would be busted up, but it just doesn't happen.  Aware of what was going on at first, and trying to struggle against it nearly everywhere, local business failed to arrest the destructive march of the giants.  In part, their efforts were so local that they were like those of Russian peasantry trying to arrest the Red Army. They tried, but doing it locally just won't going to work.  You can't wait until the Red Army is in sight of the village.  Nobodoy lifted a finger at the national or state level to help.

The march of progress (which it wasn't) and free enterprise (which it also wasn't) and all that.

So the small business class became desperate, and in desperation they turned to the guy who offered no answers but who seemed like he might help, Trump.

What an irony, really. Trump doesn't "shop local" and he doesn't have the faintest grasp of what small business is like.  He's spent his eight decades around the wealthy and is more comfortable with bullying smaller economic interest than helping them.

Even now, the bones a small business economy remain.  In order to advance that interest, however, small businessmen have to do something they really aren't comfortable with.

They have to be militant about it.

Part of that involves being militant at the polls.*

And that involves asking some questions, but first it involves waking up to economic and structural realities.

The first of those realities is that the United States does not have a free market economic system, and hasn't for a long time.  It has a Corporate Capitalist economic system that favors state created economic creatures given fictional personhood which favors economies of scale.  The goal is to make prices cheaper, and part of that is to make wagers cheaper.  The consumers are expected to adjust to this by getting new jobs at higher wages, sort of like the protagonist in Kansas City Star.

So, in essence, if you have an appliance store and are taking home, let's say, $150,000 a year, and with that you are trying to provide for all of your family's living expenses, and Walmart comes in, well, you should have become something else, and now this is your chance to go and do that.

Except you probably won't.  You'll probably close the store and retire, if you are over 50, or go on to another lower paying job if you aren't.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Okay, not facing that grim reality, what you need to do is find out if politicians are more interested in their super sized huge television having a low, low price, or helping you.  And helping you means leveling the playing field with legislation, not "buy local" campaigns.

And I'll note here, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which is trying to defend the Wyoming Business Council, is a prime example of people who are there to hurt you.  

And so we begin.

1. Where is his bread buttered?

In other words, how does he make his money.

That may or not may not be a reason to vote for or against somebody.  In Wyoming, fore xample, there are small businessmen in, and opposed to, the Freedom Caucus at the legislature, and voting for the WFC is a complete no go.  So the question is informative, not determinative.

Having said that, there are certain answers that, in my mind, are nearly disqualifying.

One is a near complete lack of private business experience, even as an employee.  Wyoming in particular seems to get a lot of candidates who cite "I was in the military" as a reason to vote for them, based on a lifelong military career.  Well, that isn't like working for a private business at all.  There's never been a time in the history of the U.S. military in which a soldier wasn't going to get paid, save for the government briefly shutting down.  And almost all member of the military don't worry about overhead and payroll expenses.  They also don't have to worry about the country coming to them and saying, "Gee, U.S. Army, we've really liked you here, but the British Army made us a better offer so we're doing to close you down. . . "

It's not just a lifetime of sucking on the government tit that should be concerning.  People who have a lot of family money are in the same category.

I"m not necessary saying don't vote for somebody who is rich.  I am saying you need to weight it carefully.  It's hard to get politicians right now, at least at the national level, who aren't fairly well off, due to the Citizens United case.  But if a person is rich because they inherited it, a pause should be made on the voting lever.

2.  Do you support the American System?

Of course, when you ask this, you're probably going to get the answer of "yes", because it includes the word "American" and nobody wants to be against the American canything if they're a politician.

So you're going to have to ask them some questions or question which shows what they know what the American System is.

They probably won't know.

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

Okay, right now I'll note that this included tariffs to protect American industry, and I've been hard on those.  I also don't live in the first half of the 19th Century when industry had barely achieved a foothold in the U.S.  And, it might be worth noting, that Clay didn't propose tariffs as people hurt his feelings.  At any rate, post 1890s tariffs have proven to be a disaster.

What I"m noting, however, is the second and third parts of the American System, that being a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.

What I'm really getting at is the use of public funds to assist local businesses.

A good example of the American System in Wyoming has been the Wyoming Business Council..  The carpetbagging Wyoming Freedom Caucus is attacking it basically because it uses public money.  If you are in Wyoming, a good question is whether or not the pol supports the Wyoming Business Council being defunded. If the answer is yes, this pol doesn't care if you evaporate and is instead mindlessly adopting twattle that the WBC is "Socialist".  First of all, I don't care if it is socialist, I only care, and so should you, about whether its effective in generating local businesses.

3. What actual legislation would they support to help local business.

By this, I mean concrete examples.

Chances are, you won't get any, so you'll have to press them.

4.  What is their position on taxation?

By this, I mean the whole smash. Local, state and Federal.

The local press always asks this position of our pols, and they rarely give any kind of a detailed answer.  Right now, most of them note that they aren't fond of taxes, but they don't support the WFC's effort to gut state property taxes either.

That's not specific enough.

5.  What do they think of the out of staters buying up all the ___________and what would they do about it?

Here, and in much ag country, this would pertain to ranch land.  But I'm sure it pertains to other things as well.  Shoot ,around here it also would seem to pertain to tire stores, it's just ridiculous.

Expressing "concern" doesn't mean anything at all, even if you are Lisa Murkowski.  

Doing nothing, I'd note, is an answer.  It's not an answer too many would be willing to give, but at least its an honest answer.

6.  What do their employees, if they have any, think of them?

For some reason, this is never asked, but it should be. If the answer is that the candidates employees hate the candidate with the intensity of a thousand burning suns, that probably needs to be considered.  If, on the other hand, the employees widely admire the employer/candidate, that says something else.

I'll note here that personally I had people come to me as late as the 2010s who had worked for my grandfather and wanted me to know how he had helped them out in tough times.  He never ran for anything, but that says a lot about his character.

I don't think we've heard anything like that from any of Jeffrey Epstein's employees.

I'll also note that as a businessman myself, it seems some businessmen are willing to fire people the second they might have to take a little less home.  That's a character defect that's disturbing, at the least.

7.  Why are they in the party they're in?

Again, an honest answer.  

Right now you can't be a Republican or Democrat and be 100% comfortable with either party.  That would suggest that you are letting others do your thinking for you.  Businessmen have a right to know what drew a candidate to the party, what ever it is.

They also have a right to know what a candidate disagrees with about the positions of their own party.  If he doesn't disagree with any party position, he's an unthinking stooge.

8.  What business related or policy related organizations are they in, or endorsed by?

This is often overlooked unless those organizations step out themselves, which they sometimes do.

Make Liberty Win is, in my view, a big no/go for a candidate. The Club for Growth is as well.  The latter favors an economy that will screw you.

Footnotes

*They really need to be militant about it everywhere, however.

Last edition:

What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

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Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

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Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Agrarianism, Agriculture, Climate 

The Agrarian's Lament: Distributism in a time of economic insanity.

The Agrarian's Lament: Distributism in a time of economic insanity.: 

Distributism in a time of economic insanity.

The heavy duty, or at least heavy, premium American automobile of the golden age of American manufacturing which Trump seems to dream can be restored through tariffs.

In reality, capitalism is based on the idol of money. The lure of gain gradually destroys all social bonds. Capitalism devours itself. Little by little, the market destroys the value of work. Man becomes a piece of merchandise. He is no longer his own. The result is a new form of slavery, a system in which a large part of the population is dependent on a little caste. 

Robert Cardinal Sarah.

I don't use the term "insanity" here lightly.  Donald Trump is, I am convinced, rather dumb, obviously economically ignorant, and suffering from dementia.  That nearly half the country could vote for him is simply beyond me, but they did, and the Republican Party, which was once the party of business has fallen right into line.

I suspect Americans voted for him as they have a poor grasp of economics themselves and see it only through what they've experienced in their own live and that of their immediate predecessors.  Americans, came to view the economy sort of like Billy Joel expressed it in Allentown:

Well, we’re living here in Allentown

And they’re closing all the factories down

Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time

Filling out forms

Standing in line

Well, our fathers fought the second World War

Spent their weekends on the Jersey shore

Met our mothers in the USO

Asked them to dance

Danced with them slow

And we’re living here in Allentown

But the restlessness was handed down

And it’s getting very hard to stay

Well we’re waiting here in Allentown

For the Pennsylvania we never found

For the promises our teachers gave

If we worked hard

If we behaved

So the graduations hang on the wall

But they never really helped us at all

No they never taught us what was real

Iron and coke

Chromium Steel

And we’re waiting here in Allentown

But they’ve taken all the coal from the ground

And the union people crawled away

Every child had a pretty good shot

To get at least as far as their old man got

But something happened on the way to that place

They threw an American flag in our face

Well, I’m living here in Allentown

And it’s hard to keep a good man down

But I won’t be getting up today

 

And it’s getting very hard to stay

And we’re living here in Allentown

Problem is, a sense of economic nostalgia evolving into economic rage doesn't grasp economics at all.

1968 Oldsmobile 442.

The US didn't become an economic and manufacturing giant because of something really special in the American system or some amazing native genius.  It was the simple forces of economics that apply to corporate capitalism, combined with the Second World War, that caused it.

Largescale industry can really only be developed through capitalism or socialism.  In Europe, it was capitalism that introduced it in the form of the Industrial Revolution.  The US as a manufacturing titan came about as the Industrial Revolution came to the US late, not because we were better at it.  The arrival of industrialism in the United Kingdom and a united Germany reflected the eras in which it occurred, and it occurred there first.  Capitalism, in the end, just like socialism, seeks to serve itself, and in the case of capitalism it does it by viewing human beings as consumers, as opposed to the socialist workers, and trying to get them to consume as much as possible.  It does that by seeking to make products faster and cheaper, amongst other strategies.  Seeking efficiency products not only relentlessly advance, but manufacturing methods do as well.  But manufacturing method require massive investment of capital.  Once machines are in place, the economic incentive is to use them as long as they can be, given the investment.  This means that new start ups always have the advantage in equipment, as they are starting with newer stuff.

Added to that, industrial Europe was destroyed during World War Two to a large extent.  The Allied air forces bombed German industry into rubble.  What was left after the war was taken back to the Soviet Union if was east of the Elbe.  The Soviets themselves had suffered massive economic dislocation in of their factories, which were forcibly created in the Communist system.  Japan's industry, which was real, but not nearly as advanced as the other major combatants, had been destroyed by the United States Army Air Force.  The US, however, remained untouched and with a massive consumer demand built up due to the war and the Great Depression, US industry came roaring back and dominated the globe. . . right up until other countries could rebuilt, which very much started to show itself by the late 1960s.

One of the things nearly destroyed during the Second World War was Distributism.  Distributism really came up as a line of thought as a "third way" between Communism and Capitalism during the 1920s and the Great Depression   The tensions that came out of World War One saw the Socialist far left dramatically rise in power and take over the government of Russia, and briefly Hungary.  They vied for control of Germany, and effectively did take over Poland in a modified form.  Wars and struggles broke out in numerous places as Socialism sought to effect global change.  In opposition to it rose not only fascism, but extreme capitalism.  Distributists sought to effect a more sane and humane path.  But when the war came they, and their intellectual fellow travelers the agrarians, put aside their efforts to support the war effort, which in the West meant unleashing capitalism in aid of the war effort.  When the war ended, the economic crisis that it had brought about in Europe and the Cold War caused it to carry on, and very successfully, with Distributism being all but forgotten.

Capitalism, however, if not heavily regulated, results in the same end result as Socialism, single entity control of a machine that serves itself.  In Socialism the machine claims to serve the workers, but claims to identify itself as the workers.  In Capitalism the machine serves itself while claiming to serve "consumers".  Neither system really cares about people at all.

American capitalism, particularly after Ronald Reagan, favored unyielding corporate growth, with one corporate machine eating another.  As foreign economies rebuilt after the war, or started up after the war, corporations naturally moved manufacturing overseas, and the American government did not stop to do anything about it, believing fully in capitalism.  To a certain extent, it favored manufacturing moving overseas as it conceived as many manufacturing jobs as less than ideal, and with some reason to look upon them that way, but just as the nation had a "cheap food" policy that hurt family farmers, it had a "cheap goods" policy that hurt the domestic manufacturing sector.

It can well be argued, and it has been, that something should have been done to arrest the relocation of American manufacturing.  But in reality, that day was long ago.  It was clear in the 1970s what was occuring, but the nation, lead by a much more sober and serious group of politicians, did not elect to intervene.  Now, of course, we have Donald Trump, who doesn't seem to grasp even basic economics and who has made his money, it might be noted, in a highly anti distributist industry.

It's nearly impossible to define what Trump's economic vision is, as he probably doesn't have one.  It seems to be ruled by nostalgia and a complete failure to grasp basic economic principals.  Trump seems to look back on the econmy of his youth as a natural one, and believe that if tariffs are imposed all the old industries will come home.  A very wealthy man, he doesn't seem to care what that does in terms of imposing his tariffs all at once, and if it creates a devastating trade war, so be it.

What Trump has no interest in, however, is disrupting capitalism.  He's okay with whipping corporate entities into relocating into the US, or devastating the economy with the thesis he can make it happen, in what amounts to a type of autarky, but the basic evils of capitalism are of no interest to him.

Some closer to Trump envision something more sinister, it seems, a jump starting of an AI driving manufacturing economy.  The concept is that tariffs will not only pressure industry to relocate here, but when it does, the next stage in the relentless Industrial Revolution evolutionary cycle will occur.  Basically, baseball caps now made in Vietnam (none of them seem to be made here) will be made by robots in the US.  Human laborers in Indochina, who depend on their jobs to feed their families, will be made unemployed while factories owning robots here in the US will profit.

It's immoral.

But what of Distributism?

Some of this probably should make any distributist rethink some basic propositions, as frankly Distributism, like Trump's tariff policy, would have the impact of making some things more expensive.  Maybe many things.  But the economic impact of it would be distinctly different.

Distributism policies, as long noted here, would take the corporations out of retail and agriculture.  In agriculture, for the most part, that would not actually have a great impact on prices, save in certain instances (poultry for sure, perhaps pork).  But it would also have a levelling effect.  Virtually nobody would get fantastically wealthy in these industries, but many rank and file workers would get back up into the real middle class.  Therefore the economic impact would be levelling, more than anything else.

Manufacturing, as we've noted here before, is a much tougher nut to crack.  We've  had some suggestions in the past, but frankly the lesson of the Trump tariffs is that they may frankly be unrealistic.  We'd favor partial employee ownership of larger manufacturing entities.  We could still argue for that, but it's tough for industries like the clothing manufacturing industry, whose workers are mostly overseas.  I suppose it could still be argued for, however.  A person here, however, can't be nativist.  Economically, that is, it can't be argued that ownership in the corporation by Nguyen is any less important than Johnson, all things being equal.

It'd be pretty hard to effect, however, in countries whose economies are state run.  Again, perhaps something could have been done about that, but it would have had to start in 1975, rather than 2025.  Trump's policies, which don't fit this mold, are coming all at once, and fifty years too late. That might suggest, of course, that something could be done, but it would have to be done gradually.

If nothing else, however, Trump and his spastic policies might serve to give Distributism a little voice.  Corporate Capitalism resulted in the situation Trump seeks to address.  There's no reason to believe Corporate Capitalism is going to get us out of it.  Distributists have been warning about capitalisms long term impacts for years. Socialism has demonstrated what its were, and that's what killed it.

Perhaps the Distributist Lament can get a little more heard.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you say you want a revolution?

Наро́дная во́ля?

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

By NICK HANAUER

 

July/August 2014

Hanauer is a very wealth man.

Hanauer concluded his article with:

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three

 

generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

I suspect we're past that point now.  We've elected a plutocrat who promised to be sort of what Franklin Roosevelt actually was, "a traitor to his class".

He won't be. 

I suspect the rage will amplify.

So, what am I talking about?

I've never had any problems with my health insurance.  People complain about their health insurance a lot, however.

I'm noting that here as the public reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been shocking.  I've seen people I know and respect actually rejoice at his killing, and that reaction has been extremely widespread.  I even saw somebody who is associated sort of with the insurance industry rejoice at the murder.  Moreover, one of the most right wing people I know, who voted for Trump twice, made a positive comment about the killing.

Let that sink in.  Far right, voted for Trump twice, and expressing some sympathy with the killer.

We find ourselves, at the same time that populists elected a childish billionaire who started nominating his billionaire buddies to government positions, in a situation in which a large section of the American population, including no doubt many of the people who voted the overaged rich child into office, pretty much cheering a terroristic assassination of a health insurance company CEO.

That it was an assassination, there can be no doubt. Expended shell casings were labeled "delay", "defend" and "depose", showing both a familiarity with civil litigation and the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.

What's that tell us?

Well it tells us in part that the social fabric in this country is a lot more ripped than we even began to imagine.  

And it also tells us people attempting to read the populist weather vein might be reading it wrong.  The rage might not be as fully right wing as imagined, as now we have Americans cheering the killing of an industry figure, something that Trump/Musk and his cronies love.  That's its populist, however, there can be no doubt.

I can't recall things like this happening in the US, the targeted assassination of industry figures, since the 1920s, when it was a feature of real radicalism.  We're entering a very bad space.

Aftermath of the Wall Street Bombing of 1920.

It suggest, however, that in spite of what Trump/Musk imagine, the country might actually be ready for some real economic reform as it received in the 1930s.  Assassination is not tolerable, but it would appear some aspects of corporate capitalism may not be so much any longer either.

Indeed, the same right wing fellow I mentioned above proposed that all health insurance companies should be forced to be 100% policy holder owned, a highly distributist suggestion.

It is, I'd note, worth noting that plenty of current Trump backers from the far right are noting that the killer, Luigi Mangione, is from a well to do family.  He is. This is supposed to tell us that this was a deluded left winger.

Deluded, no doubt.  Left winter, maybe.  But it's also worth noting that before Trump was the populist darling, Bernie Sanders was.  Tulsi Gabbard, one time Democrat and now Trump nominee for security chief, was a Sanders supporter before she supported Trump.

Joseph Goebbels was a Communist before he was a Nazi.

Goebbels in 1916.

Lenin was from a middle class family, whose parents were monarchists.  He was a lawyer, hardly a proletarian occupation.

The point of this?  Well, just because Mangione was from a well to do family, who no doubt supported none of this, doesn't mean that he became a populist assassin as he was radicalized by the left.  He personally may have been.  We don't know.  He may be just a nut.

But the widespread cheering for him, and it is widespread, shows that Hanauer may very well be very right.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*

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The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 5. What would that look like, and why would it fix anything, other than limiting my choices and lightening my wallet? The Distributist Impact.

The Agrarian's Lament: A sort of Agrarian Manifesto. What's wrong with th...:

So, having published this screed over a period of days, and then dropping the topic, we resume with the question.

Why, exactly, do you think this would do a darn thing?

Well, here's why.

A daily example.

When I started this entry on Monday, March 4, I got up, fixed coffee and took the medication I'm now required to as I'm 60 years old, and the decades have caught up with me. The pills are from a locally owned pharmacy, I'd note, not from a national chain, so I did a distributist thing there.  It's only one block away, and I like them. Distributism.

I toasted a bagel, as in my old age the genetic "No" for adults consuming milk has caught up with me.  I got that at Albertson's and I don't know where the bagels are made.  Albertson's is a national chain that's in the process of trying to merge with another national chain. Corporate Capitalism.

The coffee was Boyers, a Colorado outfit. Quasi distributist there.

I put cream cheese on the bagel.  It was the Philadelphia brand. Definitely corporate capitalist there.

I'd already shaved (corporate capitalist, but subsidiarity makes that make sense).

I got dressed and headed to work.  My car was one I bought used, but its make is one that used to be sold by a locally owned car dealer.  No more. The manufacturers really prefer regional dealers, and that's what we have.  All the cars we have come from the dealer when it was locally owned.

I don't have that option anymore.  Corporate Capitalism.

In hitting the highway, I looked up the highway towards property owned by a major real estate developer/landlord.  A type of corporate capitalism.

I drove past some churches and the community college on the way in. Subsidiarity.

I drove past one of the surviving fraternal clubs.  Solidarity.

I drove past the major downtown churches.  Solidarity.

I drove past a collection of small stores, and locally owned restaurants adn bars, and went in the buildings.  Distributism.

I worked the day, occasionally dealing with the invading Colorado or other out of state firms.  Corporate Capitalism.

I reversed my route, and came home.

So, in this fairly average day, in a Western midsized city, I actually encountered a fair number of things that would be absolutely the same in a Distributist society.  But I encountered some that definitely ran very much counter to it.

Broadening this out.

A significant thing was just in how I ate.  And I eat a lot more agrarian than most people do.

The meat in our freezer was either taken by me in the field, or a cow of our own that was culled.  Most people cannot say that. But all the other food was store bought, and it was all bought from a gigantic national chain.  In 1924 Casper had 72 grocers, and it was less than a quarter of its present size.  In 1925, just one year later, it had 99 grocery stores.  The number fell back down to 70 in 1928.

August 1923 list of grocers in Casper that sold Butternut Coffee, which was probably every grocer.

When I was a kid, the greater Casper area had Safeway, Albertson's, Buttreys and an IGA by my recollection, in the national chains.  Locally, however, it had six local grocery stores, including one in the neighboring town of Mills.  One located right downtown, Brattis' was quite large, as was another one located in North Casper.

Now the entire area has one local grocery store and it's a specialty store.

Examples like this abound.  We have a statewide sporting goods store and a local one, but we also have a national one.  The locals are holding their own.  When I was young there was a locally owned store that had actually been bought out from a regional chain, and a national hardware store that sold sporting goods.  So this hasn't changed a lot.

And if we go to sporting goods stores that sell athletic equipment, it hasn't either. We have one locally owned one and used to have two. We have one national chain, and used to have none.

In gas stations, we have a locally owned set of gas stations and the regional chains.  At one time, we only had local stores, which were franchises. The local storefronts might be storefronts, in the case of the national chains, as well.

When I was a kid, the only restaurants that were national were the fast food franchises, which had competition from local outfits that had the same sort of fare and setting.  The locals burger joints are largely gone, save for one I've never been to and which is a "sit down" restaurant, and we have national and regional restaurant chains.  We retain local ones as well.  

We don't have any chain bars, which I understand are a thing, and local brewing, killed off by Prohibition, has come roaring back.

We used to have a local meat processing plant that was in fact a regional one, taking in cattle from the area, and packing it and distributing it back out, including locally.  There are no commercial packing plants in Wyoming now.  The closest one, I think, is in Greeley Colorado, and the packing industry is highly concentrated now.

We don't have a local creamery, either.  We had one of those at least into the 1940s, and probably well beyond that.  The milk for that establishment was supplied by a dairy that was on the south side of town.  It's no longer that and hasn't been for my entire life.

We've been invaded by the super huge law firms that are not local.

Our hospital is part of a private chain now, and there's massive discontent. That discontent took one of the county commissioners that was involved in the transfer of that entity out of county hands down in the last election.  But that hasn't arrested the trend.  My doctor, who I really like is part of a regional practice, not his own local one, anymore.  This trend is really strong.

And then there's Walmart, the destroyer of locally owned stores of every variety.

So would distribution make anything different?

The question is asked by a variant of Wendell Berry's "what are people for", but in the form of "what is an economy for?".

It's to serve people, and to serve them in their daily lives, as people.

It's not to make things as cheap as possible.

On all of the retail things I've mentioned, every single one could be served by local retail stores.  If we didn't have Albertson's, Riddleys and Smith's, we'd have a lot of John Albertson & Son's, Bill Riddley & Family, and Emiliano Smith's stores, owned by their families.  If Walmart didn't exist, and moreover couldn't exist, it would be replaced locally, probably by a half dozen family owned retailers. . . or more.

Prices would in fact be higher, although there would be competition, but the higher prices would serve families who operated them, and by extension the entire community.  And this is just one example.  

Much of the old infrastructure in fact remains.  As discussed above, numerous small businesses remain, and according to economic statistics, small business remains the number one employer in the US.  But the fact is that giant chain corporations have made a devastating impact on the country, making all local business imperiled and some practically impossible to conduct.

Reversing that would totally reorient the local economy.  Almost everyone would work for themselves, or for a locally owned business, owned by somebody they knew personally, and who knew them personally.

And with that reorientation, would come a reorientation of society.

We'll look at that a bit later.  Let's turn towards the agrarian element next.

Last Prior:

What's wrong with the world (and how to fix it). Part 4. A Well Educated Society.

Distributist Notes. Note 1. A distributist or more distributist society makes democracy work.

The more money that is vested in a middle class, with a very broad middle class, and the less that's vested in remote corporate boardrooms, means that the economy itself is vested at the widest possible self-sustaining level.

Jefferson's yeoman, so to speak.

"San Augustine, Texas. A meeting of the town council to discuss buying a new water tank to replace the one which was destroyed by the March tornado. Left to right around the table: Troy Mitchell, city manager; J.W. Ritchie, tinner; H.D. Clark, department store owner; Mayor Alonzo Rushing, druggist; Mr. Ramsey, city attorney; R.V. Hall, grocer; Clyde Smith, grocer; and Frank Phillips, city secretary".  April, 1943.

Conversely, if your economic well-being depends on a giant corporate employer with headquarters far away, you will none the less be inclined to vote their interests, irrespective of whether they are your own.

Blog Mirror: Jack Welch and the End of Stakeholder Capitalism Chapter 6 of The Common Good

 

Jack Welch and the End of Stakeholder Capitalism

Chapter 6 of The Common Good

Liberal Economics.

[W]hat is bemoaned by the right is due not to the left but to the consequences of its own deepest commitments, especially to liberal economics. And it seeks to show that what is bemoaned by the left is due not to the right but to the consequences of its own deepest commitments, especially to the dissolution of social norms, particularly those regarding sexual behavior and identity. The “wedding” between global corporations and this sexual agenda is one of the most revealing yet widely ignored manifestations of this deeper synergy.

Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed.

You've heard what Deneen is observing here before, but it bears repeating.  We do not have a "free market" economic system, but rather a corporate capitalist one, which favors size over everything else, and which reduces individuals to "consumers", not people.  The economy serves only that, and operates exactly as Deneen notes.

Right wing economists and left wing ones, therefore, basically serve the same master, even if they fail to realize it. And everyone serves it in the end, rather than our economy, and everything in it, serving us.

Some basic economics, for economists

The simple reason being, economist grasp almost nothing about the economy and how it actually works, on a more existential level.

Including, even why the economy exists.

And politicians, speaking about the economy, don't look at the whole, but the part, as the whole isn't very satisfactory in a right/left construct.

Indeed, left wing politicians would be horrified by a real deep reform of the economy in ways that would actually work, as would right wing politicians.

Witness the latest by economist Robert Reich:

The economic message that will get Biden reelected and give Dems a majority in both Houses of Congress

Indeed, let's break them down and look at the uncomfortable truth.

The economic goal should be more jobs at higher wages. Right?

Let's start there.  That seems reasonable enough, so I'll basically concede it. But perhaps a better position would be to state that the economic goal would be more worthwhile jobs that allow for individual family independence, at middle class reasonable wages. 

Because, what's an economy for? To serve people.

It isn't really "more decent jobs at higher wages".  Indeed, it would really be all jobs at family supporting wages.  That's not really the same thing.

I don't know that Reich would disagree with that, but it's important to keep it in overall mind.  Economist tend to think that all jobs are super nifty, not matter what they are, as long as 100% of everyone who can work is working, and for good wages.  

Actual people, however, don't think that way. They want decent jobs worth doing to support themselves, and their families if they have one, and most people do.

The irony here is that the left and the right have come around to the same position on this, over the year.  It's a very Soviet, warehouse the children you unfortunately had so that everyone can work, until they are old, of course, as the Boomer run the economy and it's okay if they retire.

We continue.

Yet the Fed, corporate economists, and the GOP have turned the goal upside down — into fewer jobs and lower wages. Otherwise, they say, we’ll face more inflation.

Bob can't quite seem to grasp that unless an overheated economy is slowed down, wages erode.  And the Fed, etc., isn't trying to depress wages.  Inflation itself erodes wages.  They're trying to slow inflation in the only method known to work.

He knows that, but he has a pet thesis that is, as he would put it: 

Rubbish.

And here, several paragraphs later, is the thesis. 

The Fed has raised borrowing costs at 10 consecutive meetings, pushing its benchmark rate to over 5 percent. Yet inflation has barely budged. In April, it dropped to 4.9 percent (year-over-year) from 5 percent in March — according to Wednesday’s Labor Bureau data.

Why are the Fed’s rate hikes having so little effect?

Actually, historically, that's not bad.

An ideal inflation rate would be 0%, or quite frankly slight, perhaps 1% or 2% deflation, to recover some lost ground.  5%, however, is headed in the right direction.  3% for much of my life was regarded as basically no inflation at all, and the extremely low inflationary rates we had until COVID were simply extraordinary.

Oh, COVID, remember that? The thing that closed the ports and kept good from coming in, reminding Americans that we make nothing.

A thing like that could almost have been inflationary.

A think like that may also have served to remind Americans that some of the jobs they had left, pre COVID, were awful.  Note the big decrease in long haul truck drivers, employees in an industry that had already seen a massive departure of Americans in favor of foreign nationals, and which is effectively subsidized, as we've noted elsewhere.

It's an awful job.  It's almost as if we might want to think about doing this more efficiently.

If only private companies could be induced to ship things by rail. . . .oh wait. . . 

Anyhow, raising interest rates hasn't worked as it hasn't been high enough, that's why.  5% is a joke.  It ought to be at least 8%.

And, additionally, because this inflationary cycle is global, that's also why.

Because, left wing economist, global food prices and energy prices have risen dramatically as a former far left wing operative, now politicians, and a person with a strange relationship (listening right wing politicians) with Donald J. Trump, has invaded a neighbor resulting in the first peer to peer, large scale, conventional war since the Korean War.

That's a lot of the reason why.

But, left wing economist states:

Because inflation is not being propelled by an overheated economy. It’s being propelled by overheated profits.

Okay, I'm a distributist, and I'd favor addressing this to the element it's the truth, but it's just frankly not very true.   One basic fact is that those supposedly profiteering business are taking in money that's worth less every day.  No wonder they feel they have to take in more.

But Bob says:

So, what’s causing inflation? Corporations with enough monopoly power to raise their prices and fatten their profits — which the Fed’s rate hikes barely affect.

Okay, well then let's go to a Distributist economy and limit the number of areas business enterprises can operate the corporate business form.  That would be extremely deflationary, make for more good jobs at a wider level, and be much more stable.  It'd do a whole lot more than raising taxes, as Bob suggest, which would be most likely passed on to everyone else.

Any regular economist in favor of that?

Absolute not, as they're all really just corporate capitalist economist and favor slightly tinkering with the mechanics of things. Basically, the difference between a conservative economist and a liberal economist is the difference motor heads of the 70s exhibited on whether they were Holly Carb or Edlebrock fans.

Big whoop.

But here's another uncomfortable truth.  Let's go back to the first item.

The economic goal should be more jobs at higher wages. Right?

Part of the reason that wages rose is that during COVID there was a big decrease in immigration, legal and illegal, into the United States.

For years, economist on the left and right have claimed that immigrants take jobs that Americans won't, never mind that they take what are frankly a lot of middle class jobs in some industries.  As they didn't come in, Americans took those jobs, but demanded living wages.

Supposedly, in the economist world, immigration had no impact on inflation, or jobs, and in fact boosted the economy.  They may have boosted the economy, but its now conclusively demonstrated that they did so by depressing wages.

And this worked an injustice for the native born, including the native born poor.  This was always known at some level as it provided the fuel to the occasional riots and domestic strife at the inner city urban level.

This has also caused liberals like commentator Chuck Todd to directly claim that we're experiencing inflation as we aren't seeing immigrants come in. But what this implicitly admits is that the high American immigration rate operates to keep wages low, and that is what was depressing inflation.  Absent the high immigration levels, wages would rise to their natural level.

And that's what they've been doing.

Setting aside Donald Trump's pal, Vlad "if Czar Nikki owned I still do" Putin, part of what is going on is at attempt at wage stabilization, at American living wage levels, something that was frustrated by decades of wage erosion due to immigration.