Reddit reviews Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More (Culture of Enterprise)

I've heard interesting arguments before about fixing healthcare by re-organizing it to actually be more truly free market (which we don't really have currently). For instance, not using a patent exclusion system for medicines, and instead encouraging a manufacturing licensure system instead. That is, a large pharmaceutical research company would make its money not by having exclusive rights to produce it for so many years (effectively a monopoly designed to ensure that they get their investment back), but instead would profit by licensing out their new medicines to separate manufacturers. In this sort of system, the medical research companies would profit most by selling as many licenses as possible, while the manufacturers would profit most by being competitive with other manufacturers. You would still probably need stringent FDA regulation to make sure this doesn't lead to a race to the bottom in quality and standards to get low prices (and thus compete more), but it would at least orient the industry back into a more free market system, thus reducing prices. (For reference, this approach came from the book "Towards a Truly Free Market").

Now, granted, I'm sure there's some aspect of the pharmaceutical industry that I'm not aware of that may make such an approach untenable, but it's at least a line of thinking that tries to fix the underlying problems, and not just gloss over it by focusing on how to pay for it. I also can't say for certain how you could apply similar principles to other aspects of the medical industry, but ultimately, if you can improve the currently inflating prices, the underlying payment system becomes less of a problem.

>opposes border control, opposes the 'fundamental human right' of a nation to police its borders, deport illegal immigrants, or indeed for communities to have any control over those who would show up, en masse, in their communities

We do not, and I have made this clear several times.

>similar groups in Europe

Parties in Europe seem to do well, and Europe broadly is doing well. We however, have the added benefit of learning from their experiences, to refine our positions.

>prying the cross off

>gave up the distributism and subsidiarity

Hey, call foul all you'd like, we continue to appeal to real and faithful Catholics, Christians in general, and people of other faiths, particularly because they believe in the vision of Distributism, Subsidiarity, Right to Life, and Freedom of Religion that we support.

For example, John Medaille, a prominent writer on Distributism openly supports us, so claiming we oppose Distributism is a hard sell, to me.

Neither is acceptable. Both are founded upon principles from the Enlightenment, ideas that are antithetical to Christianity. Incidentally, this is the reason that many conservative Christians advocate capitalism (and many liberal Christians advocate socialism). In the United States (and the West in general), people are indoctrinated with Enlightenment ideas from early childhood onward. The predominance of Protestant Christianity in the US only exacerbates the problem, since Protestant denominations have more readily acquiesed to the Enlightenment, or were heavily influenced by them from the start.

It's important to remember that in the scheme of history, capitalism and socialism are relatively new ideas, and many economies in many times and places have run successfuly without either. Distributism is an alternate economic theory that is based on Catholic social teaching. If you're interested in learning more, I recommend essays by Thomas Storck and John Medaille, as well as John Medaille's book.

> Are there authors writing from a more contemporary standpoint about how distributism would work in the modern, internet-based economy?

I haven't read anything from them yet, but the two modern Distributist authors are John Mueller and John Medaille.

John Mueller wrote "Redeeming Economics" which, from the reviews, seems to be the more religious of the two. Again, I haven't read it yet so take my words with a grain of salt.

https://www.amazon.com/Redeeming-Economics-Rediscovering-Missing-Enterprise/dp/1932236953/

Medaille wrote "Toward a Truly Free Market".

https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-Distributist/dp/161017027X/

As far as reading goes, you might want to start with "Rerum Novarum" from Pope Leo XIII. You can read it free online.

http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

When it comes to Chesterton and Belloc, I recommend you start with Belloc. Most will tell you to start with Belloc's "Economics for Helen". I had to start with "The Servile State" because E for H was out of stock. Chesterton can be really verbose and his analogies don't always make sense to a modern audience. Of course with both of them you'll come across weird spellings and phrasing (to-day as opposed to today) but don't be discouraged.

Did you know capitalism can also be criticized from a pre-capitalist, not post-capitalist angle? This is called Distributism and I recommend John Medialle's Equity and Equilibrium as a full online text, and as a book his www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-Distributist/dp/161017027X

What Distributism does very well challenging this linear perspective of history that is shared both by supporters and most critics of capitalism, namely that it is better than what was before, and if it gets ever replaced, it should be with something new. Medaille demonstrates - building on the works of Gilbet Keith Chesterton and Hilarie Belloc - that the distributed system of self-employed tradesmen organized into guilds was better, and proposes something like this, although in a much modernized form.

Here's a book on distributism if you want to learn more: Toward a Truly Free Market: A Distributist Perspective on the Role of Government, Taxes, Health Care, Deficits, and More (Culture of Enterprise)