VOLUME V, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 1
Present-Day America, Four Tools in the Struggle over Scarce Resources
The last chapter walked the dead knot of scarcity from the ancient down through the reformer's limit. This chapter carries the line into the present, and looks first at four tools in present-day America by which the scarce thing is held. The point is not to accuse. The point is to show that the ancient pattern, the strong write law to hold the scarce thing, did not end with the well-field and the enclosure. It changed clothes and walked into the present, wearing tools so handsome that the holding under them is harder than ever to see through. This section keeps one discipline in particular. Of America it does not smear. It sets down the tools and the facts, and leaves the judgment to the reader.
The first tool is the patent. A patent grants its holder the exclusive right to a piece of knowledge, an invention, a design, a process, for a span of years, so that no one else may use it without leave. On its face this is a fine thing, and a real one, a reward that spurs people to invent, a shelter for the one who did the hard work of discovery. That face is true and should be said. But look with the eyes this volume trained. A patent is a law that lets one party hold a scarce thing, here a piece of useful knowledge, alone, and bar others from it. It is the holding alone of the last chapters, moved from land to knowledge. And knowledge, unlike land, could in principle be shared endlessly at no cost, so the patent creates a scarcity that need not exist, fencing off what could be free, exactly as the enclosures fenced the common. The tool is handsomer than a fence around a field, because it wears the robe of rewarding invention, and under the robe it does what holding alone always does, it keeps the scarce thing, or the made-scarce thing, in the hands that hold it, and charges the rest for access.
The second tool is the credential. A credential is the certified qualification, the degree, the license, the professional standing, that a person must hold to enter a good seat. This is the examination of the last chapter, walked into the present and multiplied. Like the examination, it wears the robe of open fairness, anyone may earn the credential who does the work, and like the examination, it sorts along old advantage, because earning it takes years and money that fall unevenly from the start. A credential both certifies real skill, which is its true and useful face, and fences the good seats, so that those without it are barred however capable, and those who control what credential is required can raise the fence at will. It is positional scarcity's instrument in modern dress, and the more seats it guards, the more it sorts the society along who could afford to earn it.
The third tool is real estate. This is land, the oldest and most solid scarce thing of all, walked straight into the present with barely a change of clothes. Real estate is the holding alone of the line of land, still running, still gathering, the scarce ground of a place held by those who got hold of it, its price set by that scarcity, and the many who do not hold it paying the holders for the use of it. Of the four American tools this is the least disguised, because it is still, plainly, land. The robe it wears now is the market, the natural working of supply and demand, and under that robe it does exactly what the enclosures did, it keeps the scarce ground in the hands that hold it and charges the rest. That the line of land from the last chapter runs unbroken into present real estate is the plainest proof that the pattern did not end. It only found new names.
The fourth tool is the political contribution. This is the most abstract of the four and the one that ties the others together. A political contribution is the lawful giving of money to influence who makes the law and what law they make. Its robe is participation, the right to support the causes and candidates one favors, and that face is real. But look at what it does in the frame of this volume. It is the mechanism by which those who hold the scarce thing, the wealth, translate that holding directly into influence over the law itself, so that the law over patents, credentials, and real estate is written, in part, by those with the most at stake in how it is written. It closes the loop. The vested party of an earlier chapter, the law's largest customer, reaches the pen through this tool, lawfully, in the open, wearing the robe of participation. Of the four, it is the one that most plainly makes the law answer to the holding, and it does so without breaking any rule, because it is itself the rule.
Now the layer that binds the four. The more developed the nation, the handsomer the tools, and the harder the root of the holding alone is to see through. In the ancient world the holding was a fence around a field, crude and visible. In a developed present it is a patent, a credential, a market in land, a lawful contribution, each wearing a robe of reward, fairness, market, participation, each with a real and defensible face, and under all four the same old thing, the strong holding the scarce thing alone and charging the rest for access. This is not because America is uniquely grasping. It is because a more developed society dresses its holding in finer robes, and the fineness of the robe is a mark of development, not of vice. The handsomer the tool, the more it looks like fairness itself, and the harder it is for the sorted person to see that he has been sorted. That is the whole difficulty and the whole point. The pattern did not soften as civilization advanced. It grew better dressed.
Hold the discipline firmly at the close. To name these four tools is not to say America is wicked, or that patents, credentials, real estate, and political contribution should not exist, or that they do only harm. Each has a real and valuable face, spurring invention, certifying skill, ordering the use of land, allowing participation, and a society needs some version of each. It is to say that under those real goods, these four are also the modern instruments by which the scarce thing is held alone, and that seeing this is not anti-American, it is simply seeing the pattern of this whole volume in its present and most developed form. The reader is not asked to condemn. He is asked to look under the handsome robe and recognize the old body, so that he is not fooled by fairness on paper into missing the holding underneath.
So this section sets a thirty-second layer. In present-day America the scarce thing is held through four tools, the patent, the credential, real estate, and the political contribution, each wearing a robe of reward, fairness, market, or participation, each with a real face, and under all four the ancient pattern, the strong writing law to hold the scarce thing alone. The more developed the nation, the handsomer the tools and the harder the holding is to see through, which is a mark of development, not of special vice. This does not smear America. It shows the volume's pattern in its most modern dress. The next section looks at four tools in present-day China, the same root in an entirely different shape, and gathers up this whole long line of scarcity. Let the reader carry these four American tools into the section that follows.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.