500:1 versus 5M:1?
The Sun Sustains Everything, Even Hot Air
Setting: A serene, timeless garden. Two figures, SOPHIA and ADAM, sit on a simple stone bench, observing the distant, shimmering panorama of a bustling world.
Sophia: Your brow is furrowed, Adam. You have been tracing patterns in the world below for some time. What troubles you?
Adam: It is a stubborn and troubling equation, Sophia. I watch the great engine of commerce I once described, the one driven by individual interest, and I see it produce wonders. Great estates, magnificent industries, fortunes that can shape the destiny of nations. There is no denying the immense creative force.
Sophia: That is the sun’s work.
Adam: The sun?
Sophia: The sun of human enterprise. A star of ambition and innovation that radiates energy into the system. It warms the soil, allowing ingenuity and labour to grow into tangible things of value. It sustains everything. It is a good and powerful force.
Adam: But that is only half of the equation. For every magnificent estate that rises to touch that sun, I see a vast shadow lengthen below it. It seems a law of nature that to create one man of immense and towering wealth, hundreds of others must live in the shade of his prosperity, in varying degrees of want. It is a constant, almost mathematical relationship. A great light in one place seems to require a great darkness surrounding it.
Sophia: (A faint, knowing smile) Because the sun sustains everything… even hot air.
Adam: Hot air? I am speaking of tangible property, of capital and land.
Sophia: Are you? Think of the sun’s effect on the earth, Adam. Its direct rays grow the great trees and the nourishing crops. That is the real, tangible wealth you see. It is the product of labour, resources, and ingenuity. It is what everyone agrees the system is for.
Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality... for one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred poor.
— Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Adam: Yes, of course.
Sophia: But the sun’s intense heat on one spot does something else, does it not? It warms the ground, and the air directly above it becomes less dense. It swells, expands, and rises. It has no substance. It carries little nourishment. It is a thermal column, a rising pocket of empty heat created by the very same energy that grew the crops.
Adam: (His eyes widen in understanding) And that is the great fortune…
Sophia: Part of it. The great fortune is the solid tree, yes, but it is also the towering, invisible column of hot air rising from the heat it generates. This ‘hot air’ is the complex lattice of speculation built upon the real wealth. It is the belief that the great estate grew in a vacuum, nourished only by its owner’s singular genius, casting no shadow and drawing no resources from the soil that supports the five hundred others. It is the story that justifies the imbalance.
Adam: So the very system that forges the tangible estate also inflates the justification for its lopsided existence. The heat that creates the value also creates the illusion.
Sophia: Precisely. The sun of enterprise is impartial. It provides the energy for both the grain and the mirage. Many people spend their lives chasing the shimmering, rising heat, mistaking it for the sun itself. They believe that if they could only ascend on that current, they too would become a source of light.
Adam: When in reality, they are merely rising on the exhaust of a fire someone else controls.
Sophia: The sun sustains it all, Adam. The real and the illusory. The challenge has never been to extinguish the sun, for that would leave everyone in the cold and dark. The challenge is to distinguish the nourishing warmth from the empty, rising air.
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