I pictured enclaves. You’d have trouble with healthcare and such the way it is. I think of it more in terms of principle, than actual guilds and such. Take banks for example, is there any real meaningful competition. There are enough of them to give the allusion of competition, but I don’t think there are enough of them to not have a major impact on the economy if it were to fail. If BofA tanked, there would be problems for sure, and the bank that picked up its assets would become even more monolithic.

I’d like to see the government break them up just because more is merrier. What does chesterton say, the problem with capitalists is not that there are too many but too few. Something like that. What Quin, Ellen, and Potter are doing with self publishing their works. I like that. I think that is better.

What about leverage, exactly? I mean, yes, it definitely had a role, but what exactly are you wondering about?

I’m all for subsidiarity. With regards to distributism, though, I don’t think it’s worth considering as an alternative for a whole economy. The whole system seems to me to be based on a bunch of misconceptions, or outdated institutions that could simply not survive today (for example, their idea of reviving the guild system… but if you did that, even if it *were* a good idea, which I am not prepared to grant, they would just end up getting extinct again unless you protected their monopoly on a trade with government power, in which case you’d end up breeding, what shall we call it?, crony distributism?).

I think, however, that *within* a capitalist economy certain groups who were not interested in being big financial success stories, but rather wanted to live a simpler way of life, could adopt distributist principles and possibly create some very interesting enclaves within the larger society. But one thing that I think is quite clear, and that distributists are never forthright about (probably because they don’t realize it) is that a distributist economy would simply fail to generate the sort of economic growth that people tend to want. Now, you might say, enough with economic growth! That may be true for a rich country like the US, but in a country were many people still lack certain necessities, economic growth may actually become a humanitarian issue, rather than a matter of getting a larger TV.

So, all in all, I think I’d be quite happy to live in one of these hypothetical distributist enclaves, but I don’t think anyone should try to make the whole economy work like that. I think distributists should say something along the lines of: we invite you to live a life that is materially poorer, but where you will be happier.

I am more worried about this
“ultimately leave them and us vacant and evacuated”

Not worried about this at all (don’t care)

“splashy converts are too into a hipster narcissistic thing that really isn’t genuine faith but only a phony masquerade”

In these cases I suspect the latter, but am more concerned about the former. Not that I am weak, but it does hurt when that occurs. It does not take not take much for me. I had a lot of trouble with Power and the Glory. I have a lot of trouble with Flannery O.

I have brutality in my own writing, because it is historical and happened to people. That is real. It takes real research, and you have to study what man did to man. You have to go there, and put yourself there. You also have to understand the real fear that can be imposed on you to understand what those people must have felt. If you get fear, it makes it all the harder. For that season of writing you live in hell with your characters. You ask all kinds of questions of the good Lord about how He let this happen. It is painful because you have some level of empathy with them. You understand fear and how works on you. But it is not your story. You are only a conveyer of that reality. Some artists make light of death and pain even when they are trying to be serious about it. It is the arbitrariness. It hurts to read it. I don’t want to gore any sacred cows around here, but then if we agree all the time there is not real growth. Maybe I have to suck it up and re-read, or finish reading these people.

I am open to change at this point in my life.

Memoir or no, the mere phrase is excellent: A witty one-off, and an attitude toward life.

It would not apply to me directly, since I work for a Limited Liability Partnership. But surely some lessons could be adapted.

If I could pull that off it would be called “Sustainable Penance”

The downside is the government might get wind of it, and turn it into a food program.

Also, from a Korrektiv standpoint, at least in my opinion, Kierkegaard is the real patron saint. He might ultimately be more to your taste, even though he lacks the Catholic credentials. Try a dose of Fear and Trembling, Training in Christianity, The Sickness Unto Death, or Concluding Unscientific Postscript — and call us in the morning.