VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 14

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 14

The New Road: Make the Pie Big, the Non-Labor Share Returns to the Public, and the Root of the Lock Rots on Its Own

The last section pointed out for you the deadknot of that old road of grabbing, that the deadknot is the pie not being big. This section tells this new road, making the pie big. Then it tells one most important pass, that once the pie is made big, how you let it fall into the hands of every person, the non-labor share returns to the public. And last, how the innermost strand of that lock rots away on its own. This is the passage in this whole chapter, this whole book, where the argument is set the highest.

I. The New Road: Do Not Grab, Make the Pie Big, Resting on Productivity to Satisfy Every Person

Let me say this new road in one line, and say it whole. Do not grab, make the pie big, big enough that no one can finish it.

Savor this one line. Where does it differ from the old road? The old road fixes its eyes on that pie which is not big enough, and puzzles over how to cut it even, how to level it over from the ones with much to the ones with little, and spends all its life turning on the dividing, and brings trouble on the grabbing. The new road does not go and touch the dividing of that pie at all. The new road turns its head and goes to do another thing, to make the pie big. Make it until that pie is big enough that ten people cannot finish it, a hundred people cannot finish it, all the people under heaven cannot finish it. Once the pie is big to this degree, look back, and all those fights over dividing the pie, all that grabbing back and forth, lose their whole meaning. The pie cannot even be finished, so what are you grabbing for? What are you making common for? Every person reaches out his hand and takes, and takes more than he can finish, and there is a great heap left over. Everything that dream of communism wanted, every person having a way to live, every person eating his fill, not one let to fall through, at this point, all comes true. But it did not come true by grabbing, did not come true by making the rich man's holdings common. It came true by the pie being made so big, big enough that every person has enough.

You see the difference between these, wide as heaven and earth. The old road, things not enough, so grab from you and hand to him, has to touch your things, has to bring trouble, has to drag the proper people in, and in the end still cannot fill people. The new road, things so many they cannot be used up, every person reaches out and takes and there is enough, no one's things need be touched, no one need grab from anyone. That good dream comes true of its own accord. The same dream, every person having a way to live, and the old road grabbed for it, grabbed out a whole ground of chaos and still did not reach it, and the new road makes the pie big, grabs not one bit, and instead reaches it.

Then you will ask, make the pie big, that is easily said. For thousands of years, it was not that people did not want to make the pie big, it was that they could not. The ground grows only so much grain, the hand weaves only so much cloth, and you want the pie made big, and it cannot be made big. So this new road, for thousands of years, could only be an empty dream, and everyone knew that if only there were enough things there would be no need to grab, but things were never enough, and so that saying could only stay an empty saying. And what I mean to tell you here is this one thing, the great thing humanity has met for the first time in thousands of years, that today, the pie, for the first time, can truly be made big. The front of this chapter told you, over and over, that this great AI turning, together with the machines and productive power piled up over the last few hundred years, has driven things to a height humanity has never seen. Grain piled until it rots in the silos, clothing piled until it is burned as trash, things made cheaper than cabbage. What is this? This is the pie, made big, made so big it begins to be more than can be finished, more than can be used, piled into mountains. The pie that could not be made big for thousands of years is today, for the first time, made big, by the machines and by AI.

And this is exactly the place where this book's argument is set the most important, and the most different. Hear it clearly. To realize that good dream, the old road rested on making people good, on hoping that the ones who had piled up things would grow a good heart and be willing to level their own over and divide it to others. But when were people ever so easily made good? To hope that every person turns into a sage who will hand out his own household is an empty dream, and thousands of years did not reach it. This new road does not rest on people being made good. It does not hope that the one clutching the mountain of gold will have his conscience wake and divide up his mountain of gold. It does not hope that every person turns into a sage. What it rests on is another thing, a thing real and solid, that things have become many enough. So long as the pie is made big enough, big enough that no one can finish it, whether that one clutching the mountain of gold is greedy or not, is good or not, no longer matters at all. Let him clutch his own share, let him clutch away, for the pie is big enough that everyone has enough, and his clutching his own share does not in the least keep others from eating their fill. No need to persuade him to be good, no need to force him to divide, no need to grab from him. Things are enough, and he is greedy in his corner, and others eat their fill in theirs, and no one gets in anyone's way. See how clean this is. The old road had first to turn people into sages, which cannot be done, and the new road need only make things enough, which today is done. Not resting on people being made good, but resting on things being many enough, these words are the very lifeblood of the new road pointed out for that thousands-of-years-old good dream.

II. The Non-Labor Share Returns to the Public

But here there is an important pass, and it has to be told to you all the way through, or this new road will, at the very last step, still jam and die. The pie being made big is one thing. That big-made pie truly falling into the hands of every person is another thing.

Think, AI and the machines make things until they are piled into mountains, but these mountains of things, whose are they? Those factories that make them, those machines, that AI, whose are they? They are that hand's, the hand that clutches the capital. Things have become many, yes, but they fall first into that hand. And there is the trouble. The pie is made big, but if this big pie is all clutched in that hand, and it is left to swallow it alone, it makes its own, piles its own, hoards its own, sells its own, earns its own, then however big the pie is made, what has it to do with the hungry man? The man still cannot get a bite. The pie is big, but the whole big pie is in one man's arms, and others go hungry just the same. So to make the pie big alone is not enough. There has also to be a way to let this big pie flow from that hand into the hands of every person. And this way, let me nail it down, is one line. The non-labor share returns to the public.

This one line is the last, and the most important, pass of this new road. Let me break it open, word by word, and tell it to you plain, and above all tell you plainly how it differs, by a distance of heaven and earth, from that grabbing of the old road. First tell apart two things, the labor share and the non-labor share. What is the labor share? It is what a person earns by his own effort, his own sweat, his own time. The wages you earn at work, the pay you get for your labor, what you earn by the hard work of running a little shop, the tiny bit of interest that little store of savings breeds, these are what your labor, your own proper toil, earned. This is called the labor share. What is the non-labor share? It is what does not rest on a person's effort, it is what those machines, that capital, that AI, generate of themselves. A fully automatic factory, AI managing it, the machines turning, with next to no people, and things pour out and money pours in, and this that pours in is not what any one person sweated to earn, it is generated of themselves by the machines and the AI. This is called the non-labor share.

Tell these two apart, and the line I nail down comes clear. The labor share goes to the individual, not one bit of it touched. Hear this clearly. What you earned by your labor, what your own proper toil exchanged for, what you hard-saved, all of it goes to you, and not one bit of it is touched. And here, at the first, the line is drawn clear from that grabbing of the old road. The old road, to make common, to grab, grabbed exactly what a person hard-saved as his household, the eighth section said it, grabbed its way onto the heads of proper people. This road is the very opposite. What you earned by your labor is yours, sacred, not to be touched. Let no one dream of using those two words, for the public, to touch one cent of what you earned by your labor. Nail this line down, and you, this proper ordinary person saving your money, can rest a hundred percent easy, this new road cannot touch what is yours.

Then the share that returns to the public, which share is it? It is the non-labor share, the great share that the machines, the capital, the AI generate of themselves. Why should this share return to the public? Think, that fully automatic factory, the AI pouring out things, pouring out money, this money is generated by the AI and the machines. But the AI and the machines, where did they come from? They came from thousands of years of humanity, generation upon generation, piling up learning, piling up skill, piling up ability, heaped up into them. Today's AI stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of human wisdom. That great share of things it generates, by what right should it be swallowed up by the one hand that happens to be clutching it? It should be the common holding of all under heaven, because it is generated standing on the shoulders of all under heaven, on thousands of years of them. This is the most solid place for those four words, all under heaven is shared, to come to rest. The ability that all the people under heaven piled up together, and the great share of things that the AI, the machines, generate of themselves, the non-labor share, should be the common holding of all the people under heaven.

And this word, public, there is one place in it I have to nail down for you especially. To return to the public is not to return to the government, not to return to the state, not to return to any party, not to return to any office. It is to return to the public, to return to every concrete, living, real person. It is to return to you, to him, to that one hauling cement, to that one picking through the trash, to every person, a real and solid share. When the ancestors spoke of all under heaven being shared, that public was never any office, any court, it was all the people under heaven, it was every concrete person. The non-labor share returns to the public, and that means the great share the AI and the machines generate of themselves, share by share, falls into the hands of every real person. You see, with this, the new road, at its last step, goes through. The pie is made big by the AI and the machines. Of this big-made pie, the share a person earns by his labor goes to the individual, not one bit touched. The great share the machines and the AI generate of themselves, the non-labor share, returns to the public, and falls into the hands of every real person. And so that big-made pie flows, just this way, into the hands of every person, and every person has a way to live, and every person is provided for. That good dream of thousands of years comes true. Not by grabbing, not by making common, not by touching one cent of what any person earned by his labor, but by making the pie big, and then letting that big pie generated of itself be the common holding of all under heaven.

III. The Lock Rots on Its Own

Now let me take you back to look once at that lock, the lock that has hung, from the ninth section on, over this whole chapter. Look at what has become of it, now that this new road has been walked to its end.

You remember that lock. That hand clutching the mountain of gold cannot stop, because there is locked on his head a lock of earn no money and be wiped out by the investors. In the sections before, with culture, politics, law, three strands of this lock were undone, his heart warmed, the power that propped him cut off, the run of rules set straight. But it was said, there is still the innermost strand, not undone. And that innermost strand, what in the end is it? It is having to keep earning without stop, to earn without end. Why do the investors force him to earn? Why does he not dare to stop? At the bottom of it, it is because everyone feels that things are not enough, that money is never too much, that you have to earn to the death, earn without end, and the more you earn the safer you are. This force of having to earn without end is the innermost, deepest strand of that lock. Culture cannot warm it away, politics cannot cut it off, law cannot set it straight, because it is not in the heart, not in the power, not in the rules, it is in that most ancient fear, that things are not enough, and if you do not earn more, you are finished.

Then now, lay this section's new road down in front of it. Things, for the first time, are enough. The pie is made so big that no one can finish it. And that force of having to earn without end, all at once, goes slack. Think about it, the investors force that hand to earn, and what are they after? They are after the earned money being able to buy more, to be safer, to take a bigger share in a world where things are not enough. But now things are enough, more than can be used up, and that money earned without end, what use is it? To buy? Things are piled into mountains, cheaper than cabbage, and what is there to buy? To take a bigger share? Everyone has enough, more than can be finished, and what is there to take? That force of the more earned the safer, in a world where things are enough past all using, loses its footing, loses its meaning, of itself. The investors no longer have to force the earning, and that lock on the hand, earn no money and be wiped out, its very base rots away of itself.

You see, this is the way that innermost strand of the lock is undone. Culture, politics, law undo the first three strands with the hand, the heart, the power, the rules. This last, deepest strand is not undone with the hand, it is drawing the firewood out from under the pot, pulling away that source, things not being enough, which makes every person afraid and which breeds that force of having to earn without end. Things are enough, and that force goes slack of itself, and that lock rots of itself, and no one has to undo it, it comes loose on its own. By here, that lock, all four strands, are undone. Culture warmed the heart, and he does not want to wring. Politics cut the power that propped him, and he does not dare to wring. Law set the rules straight, and he cannot wring. Productivity made the pie big, things are enough, and he does not need to wring. All four strands undone, and that lock, undone all the way through.

And the finest thing is this. Look back over this whole chapter, from saving the slave, to saving the laborer, to saving the one who lives on capital, to that locked hand, to the four systems undoing the lock, to this section making the pie big, and from beginning to end, not one person was brought down, not one cent of a proper person's money was grabbed, not one villain was set up. What was done, from first to last, is one thing. Undoing locks. One lock after another, undone. One locked person after another, let out. This, this is undoing the whole thing. But let me hold one line, and set it here at the close of this section. Things being enough can let that force of having to earn without end go slack, can let that lock rot of itself, but can it guarantee that from now on no one will be greedy, no one will want to take more? It cannot. Things being enough draws away the source of having-no-choice-but-to-grab, and a person no longer has to grab in order to stay alive. But that bit of a mind that plainly has enough and still wants to take more, however many things there are, may not be held back by them. And this brings us back again to the deepest thing in this book, that this rests on the character within culture, on that cultivation of enough-is-enough-and-let-go, of tormenting no one, of holding others in the heart. Productivity is the foundation. It draws away the source of having-no-choice-but-to-grab, and gives that good dream, for the first time, a chance to be. But on that foundation, to have a person, once things are enough, truly no longer be greedy, no longer hoard, still rests on character, on culture. Productivity gives the chance, and character keeps it. This stroke, only pointed to here, is held for the close of this chapter, and for the very end of the whole book, to be told in full.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.