I’ve been asked to mention a new blog devoted to spreading the word on distributism, The Chesterbelloc Mandate. It seems to be in part an attempt to bring together some of the stronger voices advocating for Catholic social teaching, including Thomas Storck, and also to create a more active distributist movement which would include conferences, debates with free-marketer theorists such as the Acton Institute, and possibly a print journal, as outlined here. Godspeed!
Here is a taste:
Therefore, we can never judge entrepreneurship to be good per se. Rather, we must judge it by the contribution it makes, or fails to make, to the common good. For many enterprises fail to make such a contribution. Certainly, we know that harmful products find a market, no less than good ones, products such as drugs, pornography, and sub-prime loans. I have little business experience with the first two, but a great deal of experience with the last. For the last five years, I have seen increasing corruption in the mortgage markets, aided by an army of entrepreneurs working from the highest levels of finance down to brokers working out of their spare bedrooms. The deals given to buyers got to be so dirty, that after each closing you just wanted to go home and take a shower. This was entrepreneurship that more resembled bank robbery, even though it was the bank pulling off the robbery.
From a post by John Médaille, The Cult of Entrepreneurship
—Maclin Horton
