“When Adam dwelved (dug) and Eve span (weaved) who was then the Gentleman? (owner of capital)

I guess if he was reborn today John Ball would be saying something to this effect:-

“Originally human beings took from nature what they needed to survive. Despite the commoditization, or capitalization, of nature the moral purpose of society remains to make sure everybody has a fair slice of this cake irrespective of this change in nature’s status.”

I am going to chime it with Kurt9 (Comment #4), a distinction needs to be made between capitalism as practiced by corporations and capitalism as practiced by individual entrepreneurs. Corporations are private tyrannies that are designed to reduce investment risk, gain wealth, and accumulate power.

You are absolutely right regarding the growth of government as a result in the growth of [corporate] capitalism. As long as corporations have more rights and fewer responsibilities than individuals, you will need governments to keep them in check. The larger and more risk free corporations are, the larger the government will have be to control them. (Unfortunately, as a corporation exceeds the geo-political jurisdiction of the government tasked to control them, that corporation begins to exert undue influence on that government. But that is a different topic.)

Individual endeavors in capitalism are limited by risk which intern limits access to resources. If you give an entrepreneur (and his investors) protections against civil, criminal and financial liability, that enterprise becomes much less risky as an investment and more capital is available. In short it becomes a corporation and the purpose of the business has changed.

Does the individual entrepreneur need to be regulated by a government? In a humane society yes, I believe he does. However, that level of control is orders of magnitude lower than in the corporate model of capitalism simply because the level of economic development is lower.

I enjoyed your essay, and I think we agree on most points, however, it was a little unfair to introduce “free markets” in the second to last paragraph without a suitably developed definition. (Sloppy thinking and spin doctoring in the past few decades has confused the definition of “free market” to the point the term has little meaning anymore.) Perhaps it is me that has a sloppy definition of “capitalism”? Under your definition of capitalism, can capitalism exist without the corporation? If it can, then perhaps it is the corporation that is both the child and the enemy of the state.

While I’m very pleased with much that FPR has done, I am personally most grateful for the series of Distributist essays and now this one, all of which articulate with a businessman’s clarity the mechanics of distributism and its distinctions from the supposed “two ways” that are really just “one way” in our modern statist world. Altogether, I think they will do the careful reader a world of good: they are attentive and detailed in a way very much necessary, given the poetic achievement but argumentative imperfections of so many earlier Distributist writers.

This essay illuminates as few others could. As I mentioned in the comments following the “Awtarky” essay, one thing we require is a precise definition of capitalism, and here you provide it. For what it is worth, I had tried to define capitalism in cultural terms, i.e. capitalism exists only when all social relations are mediated by the monetary market. You provide a rather more empirical one: capitalism is that condition where all members of a society must enter into the monetary market (regardless of whether other markets or relations might still exist). That sounds right.

I knew something had happened. I’ve just contacted Fox Muldar and Scully and they’re on their way to Conn. to see you.

Re: Medaille, he’s a totally screwed up redistributionist/socialist, i.e. he would take YOUR wages/earnings and redistribut them. Dude, the way I read you, you were against that crap! John can shove it, I fight commies, I sure as hell don’t join them!

I have no problem with Medaille’s retrot. He can retort all day for all I care. It’s his ideological disorder, his psychopathology (and Caleb knows exactly what I’m talking about), that I find offensive…and I do hope he has as a come to Jesus moment, and it appears it’ll take divine intervention in his case.

I attribute your current condition to the aforementioned enviro-weenie torture session, which, I’m familiar with because I used to run with the Sierra Club dudes/dudettes who were really wacked out.In the end it will make a better paleocon of you as soon as the meds work themselves into your blood stream.

D.W. in the end we’re all responsible for what we know. I like you because you’re quick witted, a terrific writer, and, I thought, shared with me a certain antipathy toward the concept of central gov’t and all the evil possibilities therein. Whether one or the other of us drift into error, become confused, or whatever, I’m still a pal of yours.
We can always pick fights each other!

BTW go here for my latest blog at PoMoCon: http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/postmodernconservative/2009/06/21/love-the-sweet-divine-

Also, my personal email is: robertcheeks@core.com drop me a line.

Come now Mr. Cheeks, you take sides too easily for a man of such enthusiasm. Teeth grinding reduces one to gumming. Mr. Medaille can be a little sharp in his retort but it’s only like climbing Limestone cliff’s, one just needs to pick ones way as one proceeds toward the view.

Equanimity is for the post-lobotomy set.

I also find Woods amusing in that, for an historian, he is completely ignorant of history, as demonstrated in the quote you so kindly provided. But then, it would be difficult for him to talk historically of something that has never existed, and the Mengerian gold system of which he speaks has no history, nor any possibility of one.

But I do note that once again, you have avoided the questions posed. So what else is new?

“To say the least, it is rather peculiar to hear some present-day Catholics endorsing the monetary policies of these men as if they constituted a radical break with the present system, when in fact on every significant point they represent no difference at all…What a shame that such men possessed so much contempt for and so little comprehension of a genuine gold standard – a monetary system based on simple honesty and in which counterfeiting by anyone, including the government, would be impossible. Any other system must lead not only to inflation, but also to corruption, influence peddling, impoverishment, and economic instability–just what these men sought to minimize or abolish.”

I’m not sure what “rent-seeking”, here, means — could you put a little meat on these bones?

But let me add that to say “down with capitalism” is equivalent to saying “down with this government.” If you have the kind of economic system we have you will have the kind of government we have; the two go hand in hand and and grow together. The proof of this is that it is what has always happened.

But it is no longer necessary to shout either phrase since, as you point out, they are taking themselves down without any assistance from us.