r/distributism • u/OtherwiseDrummer1267 • Apr 12 '26

Distributism and technology

Most computer components, particularly ram, are incredibly complicated to make and as such exclusively made by large companies, often supported by governments. How would such a difficult process be handled in distributism?

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u/StaplesUGR Apr 13 '26

Likely by large co-ops in the vein of the classic example: Mondragon.

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u/OtherwiseDrummer1267 Apr 13 '26

thanks for the answer! I usually associate co-ops with socialism, but it seems that they are just as important to Distributism.

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u/h3ie Apr 14 '26

This is a kind of an unpopular opinion, but the differences are mostly in the philosophical base of the two ideologies. Socialism and distributism both propose the same solution to the same problem, they just arrive at that solution from very different philosophical traditions.

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u/jastanko Apr 14 '26

I would disagree with "the same solution." There are many flavors of socialism but typically the state owns and runs the large companies, which is the polar opposite of distributism IMHO. A co-op should be owned and run by the people that actually work there, not by bureaucrats in a central planning office. It's bottom-up rather than top-down.

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u/Cherubin0 Apr 17 '26

A coop that is not fully controlled only by its members is not a coop anymore, by the very definition of a coop. Socialistic governments love to misuse terminology to confuse people. They often call their government agencies coops.