Brilliant essay, I must admit I've begun to consider Monarchism as the only solution to the current global managerial mess we're all in. A monarch is by nature forced to look to those beneath him for aid, support, clerks, warriors and so on.
I must admit I've been looking at Chivalry & Bushido this past year and must agree that Kingship and Chevalerie feels more natural and feels more pragmatic by nature.
Chivalric traditions are naturally emergent in states where maintaining ones honor becomes of paramount importance. One of the reasons I look at a hybridized representative monarchy as an ideal governance system... it requires that the children of the king/nobility portray themselves as the most honorable and best leaders out of their siblings. Social taboos against fratricide would definitely be required though.
Egyptian ruling families. Raised from birth and trained to believe they were gods; the well being of the kingdom was a direct reflection of themselves. Good idea - three thousand years of success. I like your ideas, but how to implement it? Boy oh boy....
Three thousand years of civilization sounds nice. Implementation will be tricky, that'll be in a future substack along with specific recommendations for structure. So subscribe and stay tuned for that post.
This is a brilliant article. I have four questions for the article and one on the topic of the author:
Firstly: as the grounding of the monarchic system's legitimacy relying on a higher power, does that mean culturally a religious revival and unification is required? I don't know much about how this justification works in oriental contexts like Thailand or China's mandate of heaven, but in the Abrahamic context I'd imagine it requires a strong religious unity - even with a "king of bishops" to support the monarch.
Secondly: you have a line talking about how outsiders would have to be integrated into the culture. It's placement in the article makes me think there is reasoning to this, but would it be alright to clarify? I'd imagine currently it's something like how the outsider must enter into the social fabric and position relative to the local noble, but I may be mistaken.
Thirdly: the ultimate goal with intranational warfare and revolution you describe is akin to the war of 60 or so English and French knights over the rulership of Brittany. What about war with foreign powers, some of which may still subscribe to mass armies of modern warfare?
Fourthly: an idea I have heard bandied about (I couldn't give you a source) is that governmental systems can be heavily influenced or even better a product of the technology present in a society. Do you think there is adequate pushing for nobles to decentralise to counteract the increased ease of centralising power offered by technology compared to in history?
As for the personal question: have you read the Tao Te Ching? It seems interesting as a guide for a king or emperor when ruling a territory, and came across to me as quite minimalist in use of executive power - the foreword of the Addiss and Lombardo edition explains how the Tao Te Ching arose contemporarily to emerging alternatives like Legalism and Confucianism as competing philosophies for how China should be governed.
Please feel free to answer any, all, or none of these - thank you for your time and this article.
These responses are from my own semi-formal education on the topic, so I may well not be correct in some areas. With that said;
Monarchies derive legitimacy from the perception that there exist a higher hierarchy and moral order. Laws above the law of man. There are right now, however, effective monarchies in various parts of the world, not the West but other regions. It is therefore a question of which comes first, the hierarchy that requires a higher power for legitimacy or a cultural revolution that defines a higher moral authority than man. Realistically, I don't think it matters. If a monarch is placed into a Western nation, within a generation you'll see a christian resurgence and appeals to governance-by-God. You don't need a cultural revolution, the imposition of a Monarchy will induce the required shift in its citizenry over a generation or so.
Outsiders always have to be integrated into the culture. Democracies are easiest to tyrannize when foreign peoples make up a significant percentage of the population. The population at odds with itself cannot seek improved governance. For a monarchy, a unified population is preferred because foreigners can be a threat to the hierarchy of the monarch. Therefore, significantly more effort will be placed on proper cultural acclimation of foreigners and cultural isolationism. It aligns the interests of the rulers and the citizens.
In internecine war, the nobility and the other-nobility will engage in skirmishes. In proper international war the nation unifies around the King for combined-arms warfare. While this is less efficient than the modern military-industrial complex, it doesn't need to be as efficient. A kingdom doesn't need to drop bombs of democratic liberation on children on the other side of the planet to maintain the budgets of national megacorporations. The reduced efficiency will result in more limited global trade and the localization of resources... If the states of the USA converted to monarchies, the nation would no longer be the single military global hegemon, but easily be capable of rallying for mutual defense in the event of invasion. In terms of military excursion it would be much weaker, in terms of military defense it would be as strong as the nation ever was. Oddly enough there would be a strong imposition to train the majority of the population in various forms of warfare for this reason in the form of localized militias.
I think that high technology pushes to a dangerous degree of centralization. That's why the proposed model looks specifically at a feudal monarchy where the nobility are tied to land area. With that type of monarchy, what you see is a strong counter-push against centralization. You'll still have megacorporations, but they don't have the ability to impose their will directly, instead they'll exist across dozens of slightly-different legal codes in numerous baronies and duchies. These systems add friction to trade, governance, and technology. When a corporate head screws up and pisses off a local count, the count can just seize the corporations property in his county. It'll create a tit-for-tat relationship where corporations can be held to account at the local level. I do think that high technology may end up overbearing, but the added friction will hopefully be enough to prevent that.
I am familiar with legalism and Confucianism, but have't yet read Tao Te Ching. I do think that, and similar books will be required reading for future kings. Kings tend to restrict their use of direct power far more than legislators or especially bureaucrats. It's because a king must take responsibility for mistakes that are made while legislators and bureaucrats have built entire industries around passing-the-blame. A managerial bureaucracy turns out to be the most intrusive and least escape-able form of tyranny... Kafka saw that one coming.
Fantastic essay. Interest in the concept and technicalities of modern monarchies will only grow over the next decade as the decadence of liberalism continues to hit new lows. Really looking forward to the next installment of this series.
Of course, we'll need new terminology methinks. And as another commenter correctly pointed out this reliance on a cultural conception of a "higher moral standard" implies as a prerequisite that such a standard is ingrained in the culture.
Part of what made Europe work was the Clergy. I don't think giving the clergy as much power as the Pope had is a good idea really, but you need to give them some real institutional power. At least have the coronations and all that be performed by the clergy.
Tanzanite trvthnvke. So annoying to be monarchist these days, most of the arguments are "erm bud in 1448 president george lincoln johnson flew 2 constipations into the communist burger king's white house or something like that yeah" or "Listen up chudcel, the only king is Jesus because he said he was king even though he was mentioning the fact that he was GOD and his kingdom is the church & it's followers but monarchism is LE HERESY because... IT JUST IS BIGOT! STOP WORSHIPPING 👑🤴🏰⚔️!!!"
I am very strongly sympathetic to monarchy but there are a few implementation concerns.
The biggest and most obvious one is "how do you implement this system when large numbers of the citizens say "how about no" and point their guns at you? Things get very very authoritarian (in the negative connotative sense) very quickly to solve that problem
I would argue that monarchy was better BEFORE the divine right of kings, which removed the accountability of monarchs to their local population, and instead towards an ephemeral philosophy of the divine (which as we know changes throughout the centuries). I am not squeamish about authoritarianism, but the mandate needs to come from the local populous not some lofty philosophical vision.
Fascism *can* lead to monarchy... it does tend to over-centralize power too quickly. Rather than management of territory through local lords, fascism seeks to maintain direct control by the single high-authority. In the modern age this takes the form of AI and social credit forms. Fascism is unfortunately also unable to derive the existence of higher moral authority than the state. While fascism could be an intermediary step to monarchy its thrusts in that direction have all fallen apart due to centralized over-reach. China, Germany, Japan, have all made the same mistakes due to hyper-centralized authority and a lack of spiritual moral standards.
Monarchy was the driving force curtailing feudalism.
It's thrusts have fallen apart due to lost wars.
China was a Bolshevik terrorstate engaged in a civil war against itself. Japan was wildly successful by any objective metric. Even in peacetime running a similar style war economy.
Japan was similar to a Western feudalism... the emperor was considered a type of ubermensch arbiter of morality while the shogun merely ruled in the name of the Emperor... simultaneously the Japanese system crashed and burned after industrialization. We need a post-industrial form of feudalism. We've seen functional forms of that in a few non-western nations. Oman comes to mind immediately.
If the King and Nobles of Britain are any indication of how it would turn out. I'd like to opt-out. King Charles doesn't care about his citizens, nor do any of the Lords who sit in the house. Keir Starmer is even in favor of arresting British citizens for trying to defend their children from foreign invaders.
I'd hate to think of how it would work in America. Would the current Governors become kings and never be able to be replaced? How would we choose who would be nobility? Half the governors proved they couldn't be trusted during the COVID lockdowns, as they destroyed their states' economies and threatened to jail citizens.
The same in Canada. Can you imagine King Trudeau for eternity? Can you imagine what he'd do with that kind of power? He'd arrest protestors and throw them under the dungeon, even as he sold out his country to foreign invaders.
Britain is a kingdom in name only. The nobility of Britain are just figureheads (as I stated in the article above) they don't actually wield political power. Likewise, the liberal parliamentary democracy of the UK is not a feudal system at all where the kings enact their will through territorial nobility. One of the important aspects of a kingdom is the king has to actually be responsible for the major political decisions made. States like Thailand, Oman and Saudi Arabia have done an excellent job navigating international affairs because they are actual real monarchies.
I'm going to write a future article (maybe a paid subscriber article? Haven't decided yet) about how to actually set up kingdoms in the United States so that they're effective. I absolutely agree that our current ruling political class CANNOT be trusted. That's because they need the approval of voters and... voters are retarded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
The issue is that the presidential/parliamentary leaders we get via democracy are by-definition the least competent and most ideologically driven individuals. You do need to start your kingdom with a good king, once you've done that though, it'll be easier to maintain than the decaying democracies we see ourselves living in now. Again, future article that will answer your questions is going to come out in the next few months, so subscribe for that if you aren't already.
Excellent article. I recognize that a Semi-Constitutional Monarchy or a return to Aristocratic Republicanism with a strong executive and family/service requirements for voting is the way to go for a future western power. What are your thoughts on Corporatism & Distributism?
Based on what i understand corporatism will tend towards monopoly while distributism will tend toward soviet bureaucracy. The issue is that both boil down to variations on humanist religions (liberalism and communism), neither of which has an ultimate moral check on power. Markets run on 3 things: capital (equipment and tools), labor (human labor), and land. Capital makes labor more efficient and land makes labor possible. All governance requires the implicit threat of violence in contract-enforcement and law-enforcement... so economic governance requires an implied restriction of: capital, labor, or land.
The problem with these types of systems is that labor and land are mobile. It means the interests of a CEO are that of a quick profit and then moving on from the mess you created to new pastures. The interests of labor are for high wages, which means the burning of culture in exchange for productivity. Land is an expendable resource.
By creating blood-line governance over land, you effectively tie leaders to their mistakes. A CEO might get fired, but a bad Duke might have to live in the community his decisions destroyed. I think that bloodline systems do a good job of aligning the interests of the rulers with the interests of the ruled. No king wants a crumbling kingdom, and no peasant wants to live in one either. Security in lineage and security in position allow leaders to focus on long-term planning, and allow those leaders to make decisions that are unpopular in the short term in doing so.
A CEO will get fired if share prices start falling, even if that is part of a long-term 20 year plan to improve the company. The polit-chairman will get axed if the workers wages begin dropping under the same conditions.
So the proposal is: give figures of authority significant freedom in methods of governance, tie them to the land so they (and their kids) have to faces the consequences of their actions, give them security in their position so they can act without fearing unpopular decisions.
I think you taking the name Distributism to mean wealth redistribution, a common mistake. Distributism and Corporatism come Catholic Social Teaching. The former is about localism, decentralization, creating the conditions for more private property owners hence the word "distribute". It supports family owned businesses and co-ops.
Corporatism isn't about modern corporate monopolies and "crony capitalism" it seeks to ensure class cooperation threw the establishment of guilds or so-called "corporations" based on different industries/professions. There are multiple forms of Corporatism throughout history from: the medieval guilds, to Catholic Social Teaching, to Fascism Corporatism, and even the Nordic Model has elements of it as well.
Sources for Corporatism: The Coming Corporate State by Alexander Raven Thomas.
Sources for Distributism: The works of GK Chesterton and Hilaire Beloc.
I hope this clears up some of the misconceptions. Peace
I looked it up, and was under the impression it referred to distributed ownership of resources. Thanks for the clarification. I'll try to put those books on my reading list, it's a long list. As terms go coporatism and distributism are still kinda hazy in the public discourse.
... that said...
Localization is entirely necessary, but it can't be regulated into existence. You need to build incentives that orient individuals toward a distributed and localized economy.
I believe the best way to do that is create a political class tied to territory that will compete with our modern corporate and managerial classes for power. Both corporate and managerial classes tend toward centralization for different reasons. Creating a political/leadership class that is by-definition distributed will help to build a counter-balancing force.
Unfortunately we can't just legislate good behavior.
Happy to clear things up and I agree we can't regulate localization into existence. It's going to take a political revolution (not necessarily violent) in order to get any of our ideas in. Speaking of which, is it a paradox to believe in Localism and a strong executive? I think I already know the answer, but I just wanted to ask.
Depends on how strong the executive is and how broad his reach. Localism is a natural consequence of strong local executives competing with one another while globalism is a natural consequence of strong global executives concentrating wealth and power. There's only so much power to go around in a population, concentrating it lower down in the pyramid forces economies to function at the local scale first and the global scale second. "Power to the people" usually means "power to the executives and share holders who own the media and banks."
"Power to the king" means exactly what it says... the local king is the one with all the power. If Amazon pisses him off, he can seize their data center and they have little recourse.
Brilliant essay, I must admit I've begun to consider Monarchism as the only solution to the current global managerial mess we're all in. A monarch is by nature forced to look to those beneath him for aid, support, clerks, warriors and so on.
I must admit I've been looking at Chivalry & Bushido this past year and must agree that Kingship and Chevalerie feels more natural and feels more pragmatic by nature.
Chivalric traditions are naturally emergent in states where maintaining ones honor becomes of paramount importance. One of the reasons I look at a hybridized representative monarchy as an ideal governance system... it requires that the children of the king/nobility portray themselves as the most honorable and best leaders out of their siblings. Social taboos against fratricide would definitely be required though.
Agreed
Egyptian ruling families. Raised from birth and trained to believe they were gods; the well being of the kingdom was a direct reflection of themselves. Good idea - three thousand years of success. I like your ideas, but how to implement it? Boy oh boy....
Three thousand years of civilization sounds nice. Implementation will be tricky, that'll be in a future substack along with specific recommendations for structure. So subscribe and stay tuned for that post.
This is a brilliant article. I have four questions for the article and one on the topic of the author:
Firstly: as the grounding of the monarchic system's legitimacy relying on a higher power, does that mean culturally a religious revival and unification is required? I don't know much about how this justification works in oriental contexts like Thailand or China's mandate of heaven, but in the Abrahamic context I'd imagine it requires a strong religious unity - even with a "king of bishops" to support the monarch.
Secondly: you have a line talking about how outsiders would have to be integrated into the culture. It's placement in the article makes me think there is reasoning to this, but would it be alright to clarify? I'd imagine currently it's something like how the outsider must enter into the social fabric and position relative to the local noble, but I may be mistaken.
Thirdly: the ultimate goal with intranational warfare and revolution you describe is akin to the war of 60 or so English and French knights over the rulership of Brittany. What about war with foreign powers, some of which may still subscribe to mass armies of modern warfare?
Fourthly: an idea I have heard bandied about (I couldn't give you a source) is that governmental systems can be heavily influenced or even better a product of the technology present in a society. Do you think there is adequate pushing for nobles to decentralise to counteract the increased ease of centralising power offered by technology compared to in history?
As for the personal question: have you read the Tao Te Ching? It seems interesting as a guide for a king or emperor when ruling a territory, and came across to me as quite minimalist in use of executive power - the foreword of the Addiss and Lombardo edition explains how the Tao Te Ching arose contemporarily to emerging alternatives like Legalism and Confucianism as competing philosophies for how China should be governed.
Please feel free to answer any, all, or none of these - thank you for your time and this article.
These responses are from my own semi-formal education on the topic, so I may well not be correct in some areas. With that said;
Monarchies derive legitimacy from the perception that there exist a higher hierarchy and moral order. Laws above the law of man. There are right now, however, effective monarchies in various parts of the world, not the West but other regions. It is therefore a question of which comes first, the hierarchy that requires a higher power for legitimacy or a cultural revolution that defines a higher moral authority than man. Realistically, I don't think it matters. If a monarch is placed into a Western nation, within a generation you'll see a christian resurgence and appeals to governance-by-God. You don't need a cultural revolution, the imposition of a Monarchy will induce the required shift in its citizenry over a generation or so.
Outsiders always have to be integrated into the culture. Democracies are easiest to tyrannize when foreign peoples make up a significant percentage of the population. The population at odds with itself cannot seek improved governance. For a monarchy, a unified population is preferred because foreigners can be a threat to the hierarchy of the monarch. Therefore, significantly more effort will be placed on proper cultural acclimation of foreigners and cultural isolationism. It aligns the interests of the rulers and the citizens.
In internecine war, the nobility and the other-nobility will engage in skirmishes. In proper international war the nation unifies around the King for combined-arms warfare. While this is less efficient than the modern military-industrial complex, it doesn't need to be as efficient. A kingdom doesn't need to drop bombs of democratic liberation on children on the other side of the planet to maintain the budgets of national megacorporations. The reduced efficiency will result in more limited global trade and the localization of resources... If the states of the USA converted to monarchies, the nation would no longer be the single military global hegemon, but easily be capable of rallying for mutual defense in the event of invasion. In terms of military excursion it would be much weaker, in terms of military defense it would be as strong as the nation ever was. Oddly enough there would be a strong imposition to train the majority of the population in various forms of warfare for this reason in the form of localized militias.
I think that high technology pushes to a dangerous degree of centralization. That's why the proposed model looks specifically at a feudal monarchy where the nobility are tied to land area. With that type of monarchy, what you see is a strong counter-push against centralization. You'll still have megacorporations, but they don't have the ability to impose their will directly, instead they'll exist across dozens of slightly-different legal codes in numerous baronies and duchies. These systems add friction to trade, governance, and technology. When a corporate head screws up and pisses off a local count, the count can just seize the corporations property in his county. It'll create a tit-for-tat relationship where corporations can be held to account at the local level. I do think that high technology may end up overbearing, but the added friction will hopefully be enough to prevent that.
I am familiar with legalism and Confucianism, but have't yet read Tao Te Ching. I do think that, and similar books will be required reading for future kings. Kings tend to restrict their use of direct power far more than legislators or especially bureaucrats. It's because a king must take responsibility for mistakes that are made while legislators and bureaucrats have built entire industries around passing-the-blame. A managerial bureaucracy turns out to be the most intrusive and least escape-able form of tyranny... Kafka saw that one coming.
Fantastic essay. Interest in the concept and technicalities of modern monarchies will only grow over the next decade as the decadence of liberalism continues to hit new lows. Really looking forward to the next installment of this series.
I am looking forward to writing it!
I'd try fiction instead of political theory.
Quite Yarvin pilled indeed.
Of course, we'll need new terminology methinks. And as another commenter correctly pointed out this reliance on a cultural conception of a "higher moral standard" implies as a prerequisite that such a standard is ingrained in the culture.
Part of what made Europe work was the Clergy. I don't think giving the clergy as much power as the Pope had is a good idea really, but you need to give them some real institutional power. At least have the coronations and all that be performed by the clergy.
Tanzanite trvthnvke. So annoying to be monarchist these days, most of the arguments are "erm bud in 1448 president george lincoln johnson flew 2 constipations into the communist burger king's white house or something like that yeah" or "Listen up chudcel, the only king is Jesus because he said he was king even though he was mentioning the fact that he was GOD and his kingdom is the church & it's followers but monarchism is LE HERESY because... IT JUST IS BIGOT! STOP WORSHIPPING 👑🤴🏰⚔️!!!"
Well, a good response to "the only king is jesus" is "Jesus is the King of Kings... there are other kings that he reigns over."
Trve
I am very strongly sympathetic to monarchy but there are a few implementation concerns.
The biggest and most obvious one is "how do you implement this system when large numbers of the citizens say "how about no" and point their guns at you? Things get very very authoritarian (in the negative connotative sense) very quickly to solve that problem
I would argue that monarchy was better BEFORE the divine right of kings, which removed the accountability of monarchs to their local population, and instead towards an ephemeral philosophy of the divine (which as we know changes throughout the centuries). I am not squeamish about authoritarianism, but the mandate needs to come from the local populous not some lofty philosophical vision.
Fascism leads to monarchy though.
Fascism *can* lead to monarchy... it does tend to over-centralize power too quickly. Rather than management of territory through local lords, fascism seeks to maintain direct control by the single high-authority. In the modern age this takes the form of AI and social credit forms. Fascism is unfortunately also unable to derive the existence of higher moral authority than the state. While fascism could be an intermediary step to monarchy its thrusts in that direction have all fallen apart due to centralized over-reach. China, Germany, Japan, have all made the same mistakes due to hyper-centralized authority and a lack of spiritual moral standards.
Monarchy was the driving force curtailing feudalism.
It's thrusts have fallen apart due to lost wars.
China was a Bolshevik terrorstate engaged in a civil war against itself. Japan was wildly successful by any objective metric. Even in peacetime running a similar style war economy.
Are you a Christian?
Japan was similar to a Western feudalism... the emperor was considered a type of ubermensch arbiter of morality while the shogun merely ruled in the name of the Emperor... simultaneously the Japanese system crashed and burned after industrialization. We need a post-industrial form of feudalism. We've seen functional forms of that in a few non-western nations. Oman comes to mind immediately.
I'm thinking of spain right now but I'm 100% certain that's not what you meant lol
If the King and Nobles of Britain are any indication of how it would turn out. I'd like to opt-out. King Charles doesn't care about his citizens, nor do any of the Lords who sit in the house. Keir Starmer is even in favor of arresting British citizens for trying to defend their children from foreign invaders.
I'd hate to think of how it would work in America. Would the current Governors become kings and never be able to be replaced? How would we choose who would be nobility? Half the governors proved they couldn't be trusted during the COVID lockdowns, as they destroyed their states' economies and threatened to jail citizens.
The same in Canada. Can you imagine King Trudeau for eternity? Can you imagine what he'd do with that kind of power? He'd arrest protestors and throw them under the dungeon, even as he sold out his country to foreign invaders.
Britain is a kingdom in name only. The nobility of Britain are just figureheads (as I stated in the article above) they don't actually wield political power. Likewise, the liberal parliamentary democracy of the UK is not a feudal system at all where the kings enact their will through territorial nobility. One of the important aspects of a kingdom is the king has to actually be responsible for the major political decisions made. States like Thailand, Oman and Saudi Arabia have done an excellent job navigating international affairs because they are actual real monarchies.
I'm going to write a future article (maybe a paid subscriber article? Haven't decided yet) about how to actually set up kingdoms in the United States so that they're effective. I absolutely agree that our current ruling political class CANNOT be trusted. That's because they need the approval of voters and... voters are retarded. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgcqB8-AxE
The issue is that the presidential/parliamentary leaders we get via democracy are by-definition the least competent and most ideologically driven individuals. You do need to start your kingdom with a good king, once you've done that though, it'll be easier to maintain than the decaying democracies we see ourselves living in now. Again, future article that will answer your questions is going to come out in the next few months, so subscribe for that if you aren't already.
Excellent article. I recognize that a Semi-Constitutional Monarchy or a return to Aristocratic Republicanism with a strong executive and family/service requirements for voting is the way to go for a future western power. What are your thoughts on Corporatism & Distributism?
Based on what i understand corporatism will tend towards monopoly while distributism will tend toward soviet bureaucracy. The issue is that both boil down to variations on humanist religions (liberalism and communism), neither of which has an ultimate moral check on power. Markets run on 3 things: capital (equipment and tools), labor (human labor), and land. Capital makes labor more efficient and land makes labor possible. All governance requires the implicit threat of violence in contract-enforcement and law-enforcement... so economic governance requires an implied restriction of: capital, labor, or land.
The problem with these types of systems is that labor and land are mobile. It means the interests of a CEO are that of a quick profit and then moving on from the mess you created to new pastures. The interests of labor are for high wages, which means the burning of culture in exchange for productivity. Land is an expendable resource.
By creating blood-line governance over land, you effectively tie leaders to their mistakes. A CEO might get fired, but a bad Duke might have to live in the community his decisions destroyed. I think that bloodline systems do a good job of aligning the interests of the rulers with the interests of the ruled. No king wants a crumbling kingdom, and no peasant wants to live in one either. Security in lineage and security in position allow leaders to focus on long-term planning, and allow those leaders to make decisions that are unpopular in the short term in doing so.
A CEO will get fired if share prices start falling, even if that is part of a long-term 20 year plan to improve the company. The polit-chairman will get axed if the workers wages begin dropping under the same conditions.
So the proposal is: give figures of authority significant freedom in methods of governance, tie them to the land so they (and their kids) have to faces the consequences of their actions, give them security in their position so they can act without fearing unpopular decisions.
I think you taking the name Distributism to mean wealth redistribution, a common mistake. Distributism and Corporatism come Catholic Social Teaching. The former is about localism, decentralization, creating the conditions for more private property owners hence the word "distribute". It supports family owned businesses and co-ops.
Corporatism isn't about modern corporate monopolies and "crony capitalism" it seeks to ensure class cooperation threw the establishment of guilds or so-called "corporations" based on different industries/professions. There are multiple forms of Corporatism throughout history from: the medieval guilds, to Catholic Social Teaching, to Fascism Corporatism, and even the Nordic Model has elements of it as well.
Sources for Corporatism: The Coming Corporate State by Alexander Raven Thomas.
Sources for Distributism: The works of GK Chesterton and Hilaire Beloc.
I hope this clears up some of the misconceptions. Peace
I looked it up, and was under the impression it referred to distributed ownership of resources. Thanks for the clarification. I'll try to put those books on my reading list, it's a long list. As terms go coporatism and distributism are still kinda hazy in the public discourse.
... that said...
Localization is entirely necessary, but it can't be regulated into existence. You need to build incentives that orient individuals toward a distributed and localized economy.
I believe the best way to do that is create a political class tied to territory that will compete with our modern corporate and managerial classes for power. Both corporate and managerial classes tend toward centralization for different reasons. Creating a political/leadership class that is by-definition distributed will help to build a counter-balancing force.
Unfortunately we can't just legislate good behavior.
Happy to clear things up and I agree we can't regulate localization into existence. It's going to take a political revolution (not necessarily violent) in order to get any of our ideas in. Speaking of which, is it a paradox to believe in Localism and a strong executive? I think I already know the answer, but I just wanted to ask.
Depends on how strong the executive is and how broad his reach. Localism is a natural consequence of strong local executives competing with one another while globalism is a natural consequence of strong global executives concentrating wealth and power. There's only so much power to go around in a population, concentrating it lower down in the pyramid forces economies to function at the local scale first and the global scale second. "Power to the people" usually means "power to the executives and share holders who own the media and banks."
"Power to the king" means exactly what it says... the local king is the one with all the power. If Amazon pisses him off, he can seize their data center and they have little recourse.
Okay thanks, makes sense.