The next verse in our Ballad of Distributism

Wealth has to come from somewhere.

Ever think about that? Everything on the planet besides Nature was made by other people. Unless you’re reading this outside, that probably covers every single object you see. The monitor, your chair, your socks—strangers worked hard to craft your most intimate stuff.

It’s a long road from tree to cabinet to CEO paycheck. But our modern economy thrives on the airy fantasy that as the value of the work plummets, the paycheck should swell.

Sure, some variation is sensible; we pay a doctor more than a duster. I don’t quarrel with rewarding expertise (within reason). But who makes obscene amounts of money? Rather, who controls such enormous piles of wealth that they help rule society? Not doctors. Not policemen. Not even actors.

Executives.

And where does all this wonderful money come from? After a long day at the office, has the CEO wrestled anything from the Earth, carved anything raw into use or beauty, brought forth any art to gladden our heart?

Hmm. He doesn’t seem to have produced anything. Every dollar of his magnificent paycheck is produced by someone else’s work.

You can only become rich by taxing other people’s work. Therefore, it is simply impossible to have more than a few rich people.

So the question becomes: is it fair for a few to be rich? With the amount that a big CEO taxes, you’d think his daily contribution must be vital. Truckers don’t make that much, but if they went on strike, commerce would grind to a halt. If farmers went on strike, vast hordes would go without food.

If our masters went on strike, would we starve?

“Absolutely!” the capitalist answers. The big businessmen do work; they don’t produce, they organize. We may not like our lives being run by a stranger in New York, but someone has to line us all up into an industrial army because it’s more efficient. Shoe factories may not be fun, but they’re a lot faster than the local cobbler.

Without our rich and their corporations (the capitalist continues sternly), we wouldn’t have huge factories or huge distribution systems, and without these, we couldn’t have microwaves or alarm clocks or radios or e-mail or telephones or pesticides or fighter jets or all the hundred thousand other essentials of life.

This is Capitalism’s strongest defense. It’s the way things are, and it makes a lot of stuff. For all its sins, there’s a general feeling that nothing else will work.

Question. Does it work?