(Howell Creek Radio addrss for June 23, 2012) Red Jacket, Silver Curtain ========================== As I told you we would be doing, Trixie and I drove back to Niagara Falls last week for our first visit since being married a year ago. We drug ourselves out of bed and hit the road at five thirty in the morning (Central Time), and pulled in to a stop in Niagara at 2:30 in the morning (Eastern Time). During the twenty hours of driving in between, we listened mostly to audiobooks: whenever Trixie was sleeping, I listened to _Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell_, and when she was awake we listened to John le Carre's _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_. Both of these books are very long and very British, and twenty hours of listening to British accents will have you emerging from the car with a game of tug-o-war going on between the speech centers in your brain and the muscle memory in your tongue about how exactly to say things. Fortunately, I found that the problem could be somewhat ameliorated by stretching out in a horizontal position for seven hours. * * * A few months ago, I was introduced to the idea of Distributism, which purports to be an economic "third way" in opposition to both Capitalism and Socialism. As a disaffected capitalist I've been searching for just such a third way, for some time now. Take some time to boil it down, and the basic goal of Distributism is simple: everyone should own their own small business, or own a piece of the business where they work, rather than being content to improve someone else's business in exchange for nothing more than a wage. The name "Distributism" tends to suggest forcible redistribution of property by the government, but I learned this is not what they propose. Under a Distributist system, there would be strong incentives for companies to operate as worker-owned coops or family-owned businesses, and strong disincentives against any other type of setup. You would graduate school looking to set yourself up in practice in some way, perhaps as a craftsman or an artist, and to qualify to join a guild of others in your trade. The guild, with the oversight of the local government (i.e., your neighbors), would hold you and everyone else to certain standards of quality and fair practice, allowing you to focus on improving your trade without worrying about being caught up in a runaway price war. Richard Aleman [writes][1], > Distributism eliminates the friction between capitalist and laborer by making them one and the same person. I haven’t met a capitalist or socialist who can find anything wrong with that, and most of the people I interviewed praised a society of micro-property. * * * I don't know what it is about Niagara Falls, Canada, but when I'm out there a world of small enterprise and ownership just seems so much more _possible_ somehow. Trixie's mother has built up a little business making and selling jewelry at local markets, so perhaps being around her and the coterie of small farmers and foodists at the markets has something to do with it. But it's not just being around entrepeneurs: it's understanding the environment that allows them to thrive. Niagara Falls is one of those comparatively rare places that has a year-round flow of travelers with time to shop and money to spend. The town has had its share of big corporations move in over the years, but because of all those tourists, opportunities abound for the small business as well. Where it gets really interesting is that the flow of people that creates such a rich purchase-point for the entrepeneur is itself caused by nothing more than a simple fixture of the landscape: a huge curtain of water flowing over a great, crescent-shaped precipice. As it happened, we were in town for the perfect example of this effect, when Nik Wallenda became the first person ever to cross a tightrope directly over the falls on a tightrope. Where the largest crowds usually flood the town with about thirty thousand people on New Year's Eve, this event pulled in about a hundred and twenty thousand. * * * I have an idea that natural wonders are the most potent attractors of people, and therefore, of wealth. I had spoken of this once with Otto Red Jacket, whom you might almost describe as a North American Merlin, one day in the Niagara Gorge, and he agreed, but he also went one further when he explained that this was in fact an ancient principle, one that factored heavily in the construction of the oldest _man-made_ monuments and wonders of the world. The great monument, he said, is essentially a man-made natural wonder. The idea is to create something as singular, and most importantly, very nearly as natural and as permanent, as a feature of the landscape. The practical beauty of a really great monument is that, properly constructed, it creates a constant influx of people while requiring almost no maintenance. The effect on the locals is of inestimable importance as well. On the whole, a people who live near a great monument have more pride and are thus more likely to have the confidence necessary to attempt and succeed in ventures, and to invest themselves in keeping their buildings and public spaces looking beautiful. This in turn makes the place more attractive to visitors and further increases both trade and local pride. The interplays between tourism, business opportunity and aesthetics feed off each other in a veritable nest of virtuous cycles. What about the pyramids, I asked Otto. What good had the pyramids done the ancient Egyptians? Or the Machu Picchu of the Mayans? Plenty, he said; these nations fed off the strength of their monuments for thousands of years; but both moral and military neglect can bring down any nation, and no monument can serve as a proof against rebellion from within or invasion from without. I asked Red Jacket why his own people, the Seneca, or the other neighboring nations had not indulged in making for themselves wonders of this kind. "It was not our way," he said. "The nations of South America built them, as you know; but we expressly separated ourselves from that kind of practice." "For what reasons?" I asked. "We did not repeat the reasons to our children -- twenty generations ago you could not have found someone who could recite them." "But why did you not preserve your reasons?" I pestered him. "To break with a civilization is a decision of immense importance!" But he only returned to his theme like water settling in a bowl. "Again, that was not our way at that time. To reason always against something is to make it the center of your world." * * * Thanks for listening to this episode of Howell Creek Radio. I'm Joel Dueck. If you liked this piece, you can hear another one about Niagara Falls by going to JDueck.Net and listening to the episode for February 21, 2011, titled [The King and the Jester][2]. Also, in case you're interested in learning about and discussing Distributism, I've started a subreddit for the topic: you can find it at . You can find this podcast on Twitter at @HowellCreek or on Facebook at . In fact, today happens to be Trixie's birthday -- she'd love it if you gave her a shout out on Facebook or twitter. The text of this podcast is released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. Synopsis: --------- Radio address for June 23rd, 2012, inspired by our recent visit to family in Niagara Falls. Mention is made of [Distributism][1] (and the [brand-new subreddit][3] I created for it). Also, if you'd like to read or listen to the last episode I did about Niagara Falls, see [_The King and the Jester_][2], which I recorded a couple of months before our wedding. Music is [_Time Will End_][4] by Lissa Schneckenburger, [_Wow_][5] by Thomas Newman, and [_George Smiley_][6] by Alberto Inglesias. [1]: http://distributistreview.com/mag/2011/10/the-beginning/ "The Beginning, Richard Aleman, Distributist Review, October 11, 2011." [2]: http://jdueck.net/article/345/the-king-and-the-jester [3]: http://reddit.com/r/distributism [4]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00129TVKI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00129TVKI "Album: Different Game (aff. link)" [5]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0013AWU2C/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B0013AWU2C "Finding Nemo - Soundtrack (aff. link)" [6]: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005ZBY2YO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=joelsimprpers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B005ZBY2YO "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Soundtrack (aff. link)"