3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land? I guess GKC was banking on the policy being like insurance, i.e. don’t everyone make a claim at once or you’ll bankrupt the company.
3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land? I guess GKC was banking on the policy being like insurance, i.e. don’t everyone make a claim at once or you’ll bankrupt the company.
A cubicle and a free subscription to Microsoft Office 360 for a year. In comparison to GKC's times, the modern humans are fundamentally different species (and by no means better)
It's a fair point. But I don't think he necessarily meant arable land, and that everyone should return to subsistence farming. I think he meant more broadly that what should be distributed in society is land, not wealth: because land ownership and its wide distribution is how wealth can then be created broadly. For GKC, the 'Redistribution of wealth' as in socialism, and the 'free market creation of wealth' in a system that naturally privileges capital over labour, will both tend towards monopoly, and end (if they don't already begin) in tyranny. It's interesting that Chesterton certainly didn't believe in the abolition of private property ("the socialist tries to solve the problem of pickpockets by banning pockets"), or in compulsory common ownership - but he did believe in the benefits of common land, as this used to exist far more widely in England.
I have read James Rebanks' books about being a sheepfarmer in the Lake District (with a Cambridge degree in history, I think), and very much like the way he talks about the commons...
> 3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land?
That's the " total croppable area" (from what I see), the utilised agricultural area is 42M acres, so 2.1 for each family!
Then again GHK never said distributism only amounts to "3 acres and a cow" and every family working the land, it included all kinds of smaller businesses, craftsmen, even industry.
GKC was very interested in the Irish and the land question, so this wasn't just pie in the sky. The Irish Land Acts in the 19th century were essentially that, a form of Distributism, forcing large land owners to sell off their land to small tenant farmers. And GKC was very supportive of the Irish and their resistance to Empire. Of course Ireland (thanks to the Famine) had a vastly smaller population than industrialised England, but Chesterton was no fool, his book Irish Impressions has some really powerful quotes about the fragility of large organisations and their vulnerability to shocks that made me sit up and take notice. He is an unjustly neglected economic thinker in my view.
3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land? I guess GKC was banking on the policy being like insurance, i.e. don’t everyone make a claim at once or you’ll bankrupt the company.
Then there is the problem of inheritance.
Writers can be great writers but not necessarily ahead of the game.
I wonder what the modern equivalent would be, if there is, or can be, a modern equivalent.
A cubicle and a free subscription to Microsoft Office 360 for a year. In comparison to GKC's times, the modern humans are fundamentally different species (and by no means better)
The horror. The horror.
It's a fair point. But I don't think he necessarily meant arable land, and that everyone should return to subsistence farming. I think he meant more broadly that what should be distributed in society is land, not wealth: because land ownership and its wide distribution is how wealth can then be created broadly. For GKC, the 'Redistribution of wealth' as in socialism, and the 'free market creation of wealth' in a system that naturally privileges capital over labour, will both tend towards monopoly, and end (if they don't already begin) in tyranny. It's interesting that Chesterton certainly didn't believe in the abolition of private property ("the socialist tries to solve the problem of pickpockets by banning pockets"), or in compulsory common ownership - but he did believe in the benefits of common land, as this used to exist far more widely in England.
Definitely a more insightful response than my somewhat tongue-in-cheek poke at the idea!
I have read James Rebanks' books about being a sheepfarmer in the Lake District (with a Cambridge degree in history, I think), and very much like the way he talks about the commons...
> 3 acres and a cow is all very well, but doesn’t the UK have 20M families and 15M acres of arable land?
That's the " total croppable area" (from what I see), the utilised agricultural area is 42M acres, so 2.1 for each family!
Then again GHK never said distributism only amounts to "3 acres and a cow" and every family working the land, it included all kinds of smaller businesses, craftsmen, even industry.
GKC was very interested in the Irish and the land question, so this wasn't just pie in the sky. The Irish Land Acts in the 19th century were essentially that, a form of Distributism, forcing large land owners to sell off their land to small tenant farmers. And GKC was very supportive of the Irish and their resistance to Empire. Of course Ireland (thanks to the Famine) had a vastly smaller population than industrialised England, but Chesterton was no fool, his book Irish Impressions has some really powerful quotes about the fragility of large organisations and their vulnerability to shocks that made me sit up and take notice. He is an unjustly neglected economic thinker in my view.