“I think so. Except for maybe something like a piece of land.”
’I’ll bet the deed to the piece of land is under lock and key,” Ishmael said.
“True.”
“The owner of the land may never even set foot on it. If he has the deed, he can sell it to someone else who may never set foot on it.”
“True.”
“Because your wealth can be put under lock and key, it is put under lock and key, and this means that it accumulates. Specifically, it accumulates among the people who have the locks and the keys. Perhaps this will help.… If you imagine the wealth of ancient Egypt as a visible substance being drawn up atom by atom out of the land by farmers, miners, builders, artisans, and so on, you’ll see it as a wide fog that spreads over the whole country at first. But this fog of wealth is in motion. It’s being drawn steadily upward into a narrower and denser stream of wealth that flows directly into the storerooms of the royal family. If you imagine the wealth of a medieval English county as a visible substance in the same way, you’ll see it being drawn steadily upward toward the local duke or earl. If you imagine the wealth of nineteenth century America in the same way, you’ll see it being drawn steadily upward into the hands of railroad magnates, industrialists, and financiers. Each transaction at a lower level pushes a bit of wealth upward toward a Rockefeller or a Morgan. The miner who buys a pair of shoes enriches Rockefeller minutely, because part of his money finds its way to Standard Oil. Another minute part of it finds its way to Morgan through one of his railroads. In present-day America, the wealth streams upward toward the same sort of people, though now they’re called Boesky and Trump instead of Rockefeller and Morgan. Obviously a great deal more could be said about this, but does this answer your question?”
“Yes. Maybe what I don’t get is this. If there’s going to be wealth, where could it go except to individuals?”
“I see where you’re confused,” he said with a nod. “Wealth must of course go to individuals, but that isn’t my point. My point is not that product-generated wealth always goes to individuals but rather that it always goes to a few individuals. When wealth is generated by products, eighty percent of it will always end up being held by twenty percent of the population. This isn’t peculiar to capitalism. In any economy based on products, wealth will tend to be concentrated in the hands of a few.”
“I understand now. But I have a question.”
“Proceed.”
“What about people like the Aztecs and the Incas? From the little I know, I’d sure guess that they had the food under lock and key.”
“You’re absolutely correct, Julie. The idea of locking up the food was invented independently in the New World. And among peoples like the Aztecs and the Incas, wealth flowed inexorably into the hands of a wealthy few.”
“Then were these people Leavers or Takers?”
“I’d say they were in between, Julie. They were no longer Leavers but not yet Takers, because they lacked one essential element: They didn’t seem to think that everyone in the world should be made to live the way they lived. The Aztecs, for example, had territorial ambitions, but once they conquered you, they didn’t care how you lived.”
Wealth, Leaver Style
Wealth generated in the tribal economy has no tendency to flow into the hands of a few,” Ishmael said. “This is not at all because Leavers are nicer people than you are, but rather because they have a fundamentally different kind of wealth. There’s no way to accumulate their wealth—no way to put it under lock and key—so there’s no way for it to be concentrated in anyone’s hands.”
“I have no idea what their wealth is.”
“I realize that, Julie, and I certainly intend to repair this deficiency. In fact, the easiest way to understand their economy is to start by looking at the wealth it generates. Of course when the people of your culture look at tribal peoples, they don’t see wealth of any kind, they see poverty. This is understandable, since the only kind of wealth they recognize is the kind that can be locked up, and tribal peoples are not much interested in that kind.
“The foremost wealth of tribal peoples is cradle-to-grave security for each and every member. I can see that you’re not exactly stunned by the magnificence of this wealth. It’s certainly not impressive or thrilling, especially (forgive me for saying so) for someone your age. There are hundreds of millions of you, however, who live in stark terror of the future because they see no security in it for themselves anywhere. To be made obsolete by some new technology, to be laid off as redundant, to lose jobs or whole careers through treachery, favoritism, or bias—these are just a few of the nightmares that haunt your workers’ sleep. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of dismissed workers returning to gun down former bosses and coworkers.”
“Sure. One a week at least.”
“They’re not crazy, Julie. Losing their job looks like the very end of the world to them. They feel they’ve been dealt a mortal blow. Life is over, and nothing’s left for them but revenge.”
“I believe it.”
“This is unthinkable in the tribal life, Julie—and not just because tribal peoples don’t have jobs. As surely as any of you, each member of the tribe has a living to make. The wherewithal to live doesn’t just fall out of the sky into their hands. But there is no way to deprive any member of the means to live. He or she has those means, and that’s it. Of course this doesn’t mean that no one ever goes hungry. But the only time anyone goes hungry is when everyone is
going hungry. Again, this isn’t because tribal people are more selfless and generous and caring—nothing of the sort. Do you think you can work this out?”
“You mean why no one goes hungry unless everyone is going hungry? I don’t know. I can give it a shot.”
“Please do.”
“Okay. Well, it isn’t like they have a store where they get the food. I’m not quite sure what I’m saying yet.”
“Take your time.”
“In the movies it happens this way. Let’s say you’ve got explorers on an expedition to the North Pole or something. Their ship gets iced in and they can’t get back on schedule. So the problem is how to survive. They’ve got to dole out the food very carefully and very fairly. But when they’re on their last legs and ready to expire, guess what? The bad guy has a secret cache of food that he’s been careful not to share with anyone.”
Ishmael nodded.