Distributism, Memory, and Evidentialism w/ Dr. Alex Plato

Dr. Alex Plato is an associate Professor of philosophy at Franciscan university. He has done extensive study of Elizabeth Anscombe, Post-Liberalism, and Epistomology. He and Matt speak on Capitalism, Distributism, and Evidentialism.
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@Platos_Academy
platosacademy.locals.com/
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0:00 - Prayer's Repentance Message
5:00 - Defining Productive Property
10:00 - Family's Economic Independence
12:05 - Family Farms' Independence
17:49 - Enemies of Distributism
24:06 - Transcendent good true beautiful
29:56 - Philosophy of Technology
36:41 - Investing righteously
39:13 - The Grocery Box
49:22 - Role of Cities
51:29 - Building for Human Flourishing
1:01:49 - Building a Political Community
1:03:28 - Nature and Grace Distinction
1:14:31 - Feasting and celebration
1:26:36 - Building intentional community
1:38:42 - Technique vs. character
1:41:16 - Impact of literature on beliefs
1:51:24 - Philosophy club initiation
1:53:26 - Certainties and practical beliefs
2:04:12 - Epistemology studies knowledge
2:05:45 - Transition from Descartes to Hume
2:16:48 - Cast into flames
2:29:16 - God's design
2:35:04 - Belief and evidence relationship
2:41:34 - Coherentism challenges
2:46:05 - Reflective equilibrium model
2:53:25 - Disagreement on Hilbert's hotel
2:55:23 - Abductive reasoning vs. scientism

[@greypilgrim9967]

I can feel my brain growing as I listen to this interview

[@andrewbosela764]

Started a group like they are describing back in Jan, 2022. “Inklings of the “place”” is what we called our group as we were nearly 50/50 Catholic and Protestant. Met monthly, 6 month renewal/sunset agreement (dislike groups that linger on beyond their proper time), phones to be left at the door, poem or piece of literature read and discussed, anything written by the group welcomed, oh and a recitation of a poem as the entrance “fee” when attending for the first time.

[@Veritas1234]

Dang

[@andrewbosela764]

The group has gone to meeting every other week since January of this year

[@rs785]

Nnnn

[@giannobong6778]

I’m also a member of an identical group called the Inklings’s- cigars, beer, poetry, philosophy, everyone writes as well and brings things to the meeting. It’s been going strong every month for several years, before I was invited. My vote is definitely that they call it the inklings

[@liammurphy3513]

It must be confusing to cite Dr. Plato's academic works. (Plato, 2024).

[@jennylynn215]

One thing that brought me back to God was The Case for Christ. I went from secular to born again to new age to athiesm and then Catholicism because of the robust discussions like this that I NEED. I am an evidentialist and gained a lot of knowledge from The Case for Christ. Im HOME. 🥰 Pints with Aquinas has fed my soul since I discovered it a few months ago. ❤

[@terrynboucher3219]

If you want more to eat, definitely check out Shameless Popery by Joe Heschmeyer.

[@benjaminshirley]

This!! As a Protestant I never truly had real assent of will to the Church. I merely leaned in on my own private judgement with matters of religion

[@CamilaVillaloboss]

I could listen Dr. Alex Plato talk for hours, he is so articulate, please keep having him back!

[@xavierburt4218]

Suggestion for the poetry club: “Pints with Plato”

[@bradleymarshall5489]

Allen Tate who was a Southern poet and convert to Catholicism stood for the Southern Agraian movement which was the American equivalent of the distributism movement. True American conservatism has far more in common with traditional Catholic thought than most think

[@redcatofdeath]

They were Southern sympathizers and/or apologists I believers.

[@outofoblivionproductions4015]

I'd love Dr Plato to talk about Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism and how the Nominalists stole the Great Ox's thunder.

[@dylanschweitzer18]

They did in one of their previous convos on here

[@jambangoni]

Dr. Plato is one of the guests that I’d definitely listen to his own podcast if he had one

[@pu3he]

> ... putting people over services and products because I think an argument a lot of people would make about the good that Amazon has brought about is I can open up this laptop lid and within half hour or an hour I could build myself a library that would have made Thomas aquinus jealous yes that's incredible. I live in a local village. A wealthy investor (not a local) bought off large swathes of a hill nearby. The steep terrain just below the top on both sides of the hill was bulldozed with large crawler excavators into terraces for vineyards in a matter of months. And then the heavy rains soaked the bare soil on the other side of the hill and caused a slow avalanche that now threatens the village on the other side of the hill. But here's the thing, all these hills around here are all already terraced for hundreds of years by hand. They were just abandoned and slowly degraded by erosion and flora. But transforming the land slowly, the environment has time to adapt. We're just doing so many things beyond our human capacities it's getting maddening.

[@stephencotter538]

I felt sick with anxiety and uneasiness (in a good way if that makes sense ) while reading Crime and Punishment. It was more intense than the feeling I get watching a horror movie. Edge of my seat. That book is incredible. Thanks to PWA for turning me on to Dostoyevsky. I love all the Brothers Karamazov references sprinkled throughout the episodes.

[@giannobong6778]

I’m a member of a very similar group called the Inklings’s- cigars, beer, poetry, philosophy, everyone writes as well and brings things to the meeting. It’s been going strong every month for several years. My vote is definitely that you all call it the inklings

[@carlossardina3161]

I was just thinking that Matt needs to bring Alex Plato back on

[@ChristianTheChicken]

An Alex Plato + Tom Ward episode would be amazing.

[@Thomasfboyle]

If nobody else thought that it wouldn’t have happened, so in a sense, your thoughts formed this reality we now share

[@pajamaninja2157]

same

[@socko2085]

Sheesh...talk about nominative determinism. Great discussion as always. Really enjoyed hearing from Dr. Plato.

[@vee84j53]

He's one of my favourite guests ❤

[@dylanschweitzer18]

Would love to see dr. Plato and Dr. Jordan Petersen discuss capitalism and distributism.

[@jake6132]

I started a men's reading group a few years ago and it's been very life-giving. We started reading mostly fiction but are moving into more theology and philosophy.

[@loganleroy8622]

For your lounge you could call it the "Garden of Steubenville". Easy callback to the Garden of Eden, as well as gardens naturally being places where beauty is created through active cultivation of the garden. In this case you would be cultivating knowledge.

[@Tman3421]

Can we get Dr. Plato and Dr. Jones together for a conversation? I feel like I could watch that for at least 10 hours.

[@baileyannross]

I feel like these are big ideas to chew on and I really appreciate Dr. Plato bringing these difficult concepts down to my level at least as much as he could. Thank you PWA for producing this conversation.

[@yeetmaestro575]

Never thought Cormac McCarthy would be mentioned in a Pints episode. I just finished “All the Pretty Horses”, and “Blood Meridian” is a true masterpiece, up there for consideration as the great American novel

[@Crypto_Catholic_Crow]

I’ll come back to this episode when I’ve had enough sleep

[@MeanBeanComedy]

Smart move. 🧠

[@TheDomVerde]

Oh God, to have what Steubenville has all over this country. It is so tempting to uproot and move to Steubenville, but what about where I am? I don't have Christians so much around me, but I certainly do have pagans who are localists/distributist in practice. May God convert us all.

[@kristinwannemuehler9757]

Many Napro doctors would say there are always alternatives to the mainstream contraceptives prescribed to women.

[@phil2d2]

On the subject of technology changing society at the 28:00 mark: Marshall McLuhan said this about the invention of media in the 50’s, “society will create the media which will eventually recreate society”.

[@user-oj7lg5bj3p]

Great advice!

[@bobgriffin8306]

Matt, when are you going to get the Dougherteys on? We have heard of them over here down under and want to learn more about how their farming and faith life meld.

[@sk8traveler727]

1:34:50 I started a small gathering in college where we would do this every third Thursday of the month. We called it “Man Cans and Poetry”. It didn’t last too long but it was a blast whenever we did it.

[@KEP1983]

Distributism? Awesome. Will have to listen. It doesnt get talked about much but should.

[@Veritas1234]

What are your thoughts on how to achieve distributism?

[@tomasn4744]

Read Tradition in Action. Distributism is like socialism

[@outofoblivionproductions4015]

@@tomasn4744 No. More capitalists and subsidiarity is not socialism.

[@Ravageman00]

😢i

[@claybody]

@@Veritas1234 Elect people that carry distributist policies. The American Solidarity Party.

[@annashaffer234]

We named our son after St. Ephrem the Syrian. That was a sweet way to begin the video! (I’m like 3 mins in but I’m sure it’s great.) 😂

[@sw6155]

1:37:42 We need this both south and especially east of the BNA airport here in Nashville metro area!!! 🙌

[@stephaniedorothy6525]

What was that prayer you said at the top of the show Matt????

[@chase.23]

I want to start one of these men's groups in my city!!

[@rebeccabrowns2063]

My husband and I would love to open a group like this in Atchison/KC area!!!

[@erikthebread6252]

I believe Chris Hedges coined the term “inverted totalitarianism.”

[@anthonygoodman48]

One of the issues with the internet is that it has perversely concentrated ownership. Matt is not seeing it within his community because it is a local community/polity. He is also top 0.1% of content creators so he has no issue with the alogarithms but it’s different for almost anyone else starting out, the cost of advertising is insane and we have done away with localism, this is largely because of not in spite of the internet.

[@marshallluddite]

awesome

[@lesliejamieson6781]

What is the name of the prayer Matt was talking about in the beginning of the interview?

[@fotisvon9943]

Im interested in distributism but there arent many good easily accessible resources on it

[@samuelcampos2642]

That’s a good point here. How to make valuable the chain of value of production. That isn’t contrary to the good of price, because demand has being changing to be more conscientious with the environment 33:31

[@samuelcampos2642]

37:10 you can say they are not innit for the money which is not necessarily true. But what you can see is that markets work in a social way. And the conditions that make things hard 37:53 is when governments and big businesses (chronic capitalism) worsens efforts, but it’s not distributism.

[@samuelcampos2642]

51:08 but the way to build cities like that comes from the result of a market economy that alllows that. I’m from Costa Rica and live and work in Guatemala and you can’t really build a city like that YET. We have to build a market economy first.

[@ryanofsantanvalley4220]

Mens Group for the book orientated boys sounds fun. But what are the more rugged blue collar Catholic men supposed to do? I enjoy philosophy, but sitting around listening to poetry doesn't sound pleasing. Yet I crave community. Any suggestions?

[@scottsmeltz3585]

I always worry when someone thinks they're going to "engineer" a society, no matter what picture they paint. There are always unintended consequences.

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

The thing is though, all societies are in fact engineered. Liberalism is engineered; “free markets” aren’t free. Etc. What you’re used to seems natural, but it’s driven by policy.

[@MeanBeanComedy]

Everything but running around alone in the woods with sticks is "engineered." I'd rather love somewhere engineered by the Church and her principles.

[@pcplayer9613]

You could call the groups "Inklings", taking inspiration from Tolkien and his group of friends, or something like Pier Giorgio Frassati's "Society of Shady Characters", which he started with a group of young men of his town. Just a couple ideas.

[@samanthatyler6762]

What was the original prayer Matt mentioned right at the start? (like a litany of some sort) Thanks

[@jonathanharvey6776]

Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian to the Most Holy Spirit

[@samanthatyler6762]

@@jonathanharvey6776 thank you

[@yeetmaestro575]

What was that prayer Matt was talking about at the beginning?

[@lawrencesmith43]

Toughest part of small business is finding young people willing to work entry level jobs, particularly in the trades. Hard work. They'd prefer to be a barista in a climate controlled environment.

[@catholicconvert2119]

You gotta pay them bro

[@lawrencesmith43]

You’re absolutely right. The sole proprietors I know, have margins too small to pay new employees more than minimum wage. They keep their businesses above water by doing the work themselves. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the coming years.

[@catholicconvert2119]

@@lawrencesmith43 it’s unjust to pay your employees minimum wage. They can’t live on that. If they cannot afford to pay a just wage then they cannot afford to run a business. That’s all there is to it

[@imjustheretogrill9260]

@@catholicconvert2119that’s not accurate. You may have that obligation if they need to live on their own/support a family. There is a place for cheap jobs for high schoolers.

[@talinthon760]

@@catholicconvert2119 Not to try and pick a fight, but unjust according to whose standard? The only thing that minimum wage tells me is that this is the amount I must pay employees; anything above that is, and must be considered as, generosity on my part.

[@markbirmingham6011]

Comment for traction

[@thesipesisrandom4534]

The issue is Usury... That's it. No matter how local or how global the economy is - Usury is the issue. If you have no Usury then good economics will flow. If you continue to tweak and change and alter little by little but keep Usury then it doesn't matter. It will be evil. Economics is ALL about morality and that's it. It's not a "science" that functions outside of morality.

[@0_3_6_9_0]

51:45 Accurate!

[@nicholasjagneaux]

I feel dumber after listening to this. I mean, I thought I was fairly intelligent; but, this left me feeling like a second grader in an advanced math class.

[@dawsonehlke1290]

Getting into character is appropriate for reading Shakespeare, because most his works are plays, and the words are spoken by characters with intentions in situations. Not all poetry need be read like that.

[@PoundianAesthete]

I'm working on turning Dr. Plato into a Aristotelian-Nietzschean

[@josephzaiger9532]

Like if one of your favorite parts of the week is when a new Pints episode drops 🙌🏻

[@wfgstuff8534]

Dude Gabi one week and now a Plato?!?! Getting from Chesterton in Mt. Angel. Didn't realize you were Nick's twin😂

[@damyankuzmic5605]

Hi hello howdy greeting bless

[@haydongonzalez-dyer2727]

nice

[@indy317]

I am about halfway through the episode. Maybe it gets better, but I can only leave the same suggestion I provided when Matt had Dr. Jones: have a Catholic economist/social thinker that understands markets and the economy on to provide a counter point. There are plenty out available; Father Sirico is the first that comes to mind. The combination of constant ad hominem attacks against capitalism (essentially defined as everything we hate about the post-WWII world) and rose colored historical lenses are particularly annoying. There's much to pick apart and the KZbin comment section isn't the place to do it, but I'll leave just a few examples from the first thirty minutes of the show: 1) guilds were often used to limit the ability for people to enter into labor markets to develop skills in trades and artificially inflated prices. 2) the subsistence farming praised by Dr Jones' is far, far more economically insecure than most professions in today's economy. There's a reason why Dr. Plato's family is no longer working on a farm and he's free to pursue a career in academia.

[@BuricIvan]

Couldn't agree more! There's plenty of good candidates, my fav is the guy who has "Cutting The Gordian Knot" podcast

[@MeanBeanComedy]

He wasn't "attacking" anything.

[@franciscociddasilva3934]

But how do you redistribute the capital? Distributism needs Socialism to work as Belloc admitted.

[@mashagoepel4000]

I think you're misrepresenting The Grocery Box here. "The only things they sell" (39:20) are not locally produced items. There's King Arthur flour, Domino sugar, Red Star yeast, and Hershey's syrup, etc.. Please honestly represent the local organizations you're promoting, so that people have a real understanding of what locally run/locally supportive businesses can and can't do. If it's not sustainable for The Grocery Box to just sell locally produced items, be honest about that, don't sell your viewers a false view of an idealistically self sufficient community.

[@AC-sc1pc]

Thursday. Please get rid of the auto focus cameras. That's horrible.

[@susanjohnson8847]

Wishing Dr Plato would spend more time giving his students feedback in his classes than sitting here getting noticed. Speaking as a Franciscan parent with a student under Dr Plato.

[@susanjohnson8847]

Taking on too many classes in order to increase your income at the expense of your students is not ethical

[@susanjohnson8847]

Love seeks the good of the other if I’m supposed to love my brother I would say to Dr. Plato to reevaluate his priorities in this. God speaks to us in our circumstances.

[@MeanBeanComedy]

Just message him privately instead of making a public scene, lady. 🙄🙄🤦🏼‍♂️

[@roarkkaufman9339]

28:00 an atomic bomb could be used to destroy large meteors or something to protect earth, but using it on people would always be immoral

[@somber_whimsy]

1:18:00

[@imjustheretogrill9260]

So, distribution is people who can afford to start small business starting small business in their local Community? How is that scalable? Most people can’t run a business. Maybe if the irs was reigned in but you would have to have crazy money to do Matt’s cigar shop for an example.

[@zsedcftglkjh]

It's a philosophy for the upper class intellectual.

[@isaacmckenzie5074]

As a Catholic, a Chesterton fan, and someone who has read widely in economics, distributism makes me cringe so hard. At first, it sounds like a good idea. After further study, holes emerge everywhere. Descriptively decent but prescriptively disastrous. I guess it does depend on your 'win condition' though.

[@smolbeanna]

I haven't watched the whole video (to preface my question) but what holes pop up in the prescription of distributism? If not that, what kind of economy do you prefer?

[@benabaxter]

It also depends on the mode of implementation. An ideal moves the mind to act in its concrete circumstance. Distributism is not some kind of totalitarian ideology implemented from above, but a mode of living where Catholic social teaching is taken seriously. I don't think it's really an economic theory, so much as a an attempt to tease out what is lacking in our particular circumstances and what Catholic social teaching says. I don't know that it goes much further than that. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[@davisdrury3339]

What kind of holes? How is it "prescriptively disastrous?"

[@samuelcampos2642]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The problem isn’t the idea per se, but the practice isn’t in any way doable.

[@mathematicalgeek8657]

@@benabaxter How on earth will the distribution of say land be achieved to those who have not? The answer is simple. Use government force to do it. It seems to me that is theft.

[@samuelcampos2642]

Several questions: Who gets to choose who gets who? How wouldn’t that be tyrannical at some point? How does distributions would fix the problem free markets do make work? I’m an economist and catholic and I feel there is a lot of misunderstanding about what allows growth and how it doesn’t go against Gods teaching.

[@MeanBeanComedy]

It's local. Like a single neighbourhood. Where's the tyranny coming from? It's voluntary.

[@prodigaldawtr7907]

What? I forgot and what?

[@somber_whimsy]

2:45:18

[@TriDexterousTiger]

“Passing Peace Pipeline” ?

[@TriDexterousTiger]

“Piping Up” also works

[@user-he5vc6mn3v]

A good Catholic convert from Evangelicalism should know that Elizabeth Elliot, wife of Jim Elliot, is sister if Dr Thomas Howard, author of Evangelical is not enough and Catholic convert. 😃

[@grimsithe959]

I don't think that sharing certain fundamentals in common means a capitalist is an unwitting distributist. A capitalist (or some subscriber to a newly invented economic system of thought) could say that it is, in fact, the distributist who is the unwitting capitalist for sharing fundamentals in common with them. Maybe that's a minor point, but it seems presumptuous at the very least.

[@MeanBeanComedy]

But distributism came first. I can't say my father takes after me.

[@grimsithe959]

@@MeanBeanComedy This is missing my point. Nowhere did I say capitalism doesn't take its heritage from other economic systems. But just like us sharing with Jewish believers that the Old Testament is the inspired word of God (among other fundamentals) doesn't make Catholics unwitting Jews because they cropped up in time first, saying that a shared core of fundamentals between a distributist and capitalist makes someone an unwitting crypto-distributist is just as absurd. It also can be construed as condescending, despite what I assume is good intentions from Dr. Plato.

[@tonyl3762]

Topic of distributism would've been better as dialogue with Trent Horn or Tom Woods. No framework can remove sin. Using government to supposedly decentralize power to families comes with its own risks and dangers

[@JustineBrownsBookshelf]

Hurrah, Distributism! There’s a new Distributist party here in England. Small, but green shoots…

[@claybody]

The American Solidarity Party.

[@TheGringoSalado]

Cities destroy human skill outside speciality. This is why most cannot survive outside a city after 1 or 2 generations

[@klinger800]

As a Catholic org, why do I need to put my preferred pronouns for a membership for ACPA? Quick way to lose.

[@anthonygoodman48]

Dawson Europe was built by men working silently prayerfully in prayer, you will never find the perfect community. Start with silent prayer in your imperfect parish and home in your domestic church, and work from there. The medieval guilds didn’t spring painlessly from the dearth of the pagan world.

[@theoe354]

Distributism is based.

[@7sarahcatherine]

Re: what to call a group of men (or women or a mixed gathering?) who come together to read and discuss great poetry and bug ideas.. Culture Keepers comes to mind.

[@7sarahcatherine]

*big ideas 🙈

[@mkristof83]

What do U guys call capitalism? 'Couse nowdays there is no such a thing as "free market capitalism".

[@MrSmith-zy2bp]

Real capitalism has never been tried before. Real socialism has never been tried before. 🙄 Economic cultists are so tiresome.

[@mkristof83]

@@MrSmith-zy2bp If I know the history properly, the free market capitalism has been tried ín the US, ín England. I'm not saying that there was beautiful time, where everyone walked peacefully hand in hend, but that was the real capitalism. What we have now is a sugarcoated communism.

[@MrSmith-zy2bp]

@@mkristof83 BS, what we have is managerial capitalism (see the works of James Burnham) and finance capitalism.

[@alexandersiebers827]

Technique is not limited to machines. The human mind/ technical thinking is the worrisome frontier for this "scientism".

[@jonathanstensberg]

If you can’t see the ENORMOUS difference between Distributism and Localism, go watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Hint: the good guys are distributists; the bad guy is a localist.

[@zsedcftglkjh]

Mr. Potter, the globalist banking mogul who brings turns Bedford Falls into a mini Las Vegas, is a Localist?

[@outofoblivionproductions4015]

Hilaire Beloc's 'The Crisis of Civilisation' - NZ$133.92 (Amazon)

[@2amgaming388]

Community building is still so viewed in this country with scepticism, but there are business built off the back of community building, and they will change the world. theconsumerrebellion