The next verse in our Ballad of Distributism

Don’t laugh. Think about it. Does Capitalism work? Yes? Then what would have to happen for you to consider it broken?

• Capitalism keeps most fathers and many mothers away from their kids for ten to twelve hours a day.
• Capitalism unceasingly exploits the poorest members of multiple societies.
• Capitalism is permanently and deliberately unstable, to the point where your local, humdrum job can be threatened by someone on the other side of the ocean.
• Capitalism demands the frenetic production of inferior goods.
• Capitalism enslaves us in a cult where the only unanswerable motive is money. A plan may destroy a neighborhood, scatter a family, and thrash a culture, but if it’ll generate any cash, it’s progress.
• Capitalism robs most people of economic freedom. Most people cannot decide how they spend their workday, nor can they easily find other ways to feed themselves if they lose their boss’s fancy.
• Capitalism encourages an obsessive over-consumption that, in light of the world’s poverty, is little less than a crime.
• Capitalism encourages dependence on vast, impersonal systems for everything. Your last meal probably traveled a thousand miles or so to your plate. Check the tag on your shirt—which overseas sweatshop is it this time?

Those are just the highlights, I could think of more if I wasn’t in a hurry. Here’s my theory.

Capitalism does not work. It never has.

Of course it has its good points. So did pre-1861 plantations. Good points don’t cut it. The system is busted.

And you know what? You’re allowed to be mad. It doesn’t make you a Communist.

Not everything we suffer is the system’s fault, but much of it is. Capitalism hurts a lot of people. And as badly as we get it here in America and other “First World” kingdoms, what about everyone else? The rich tax us; we tax the scantily paid wage slaves that pick our food and make our clothes and build our life-saving medical technology. It is impossible for the whole world to ever have as much stuff as you and I, because only a vast base of underpaid slave labor could ever make it all.

The way out? Less stuff, more freedom. Freedom means you own the tools and land you need to earn your bread. They’re not rented, they’re not mortgaged, they’re yours. There’s a swarm of people on this planet, but if you do the math, there’s plenty for each of us to own more than we need—if it’s well distributed.