VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 2

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 2

The Four Systems, at Bottom, All Settle People (Part Two)

The last section looked, from a height, at three of them, slavery, socialism, and capital, and saw that peeled to the very bottom they all settle people. This section goes on to the fourth, communism, distribution according to need, which sees to exactly those people the first three can never settle, the ones who can by no means reach a share on their own. And after this fourth one, it nails down for you the common thing at the bottom of all four. Settling people. Nail that layer down, and you hold in your hand a yardstick ten thousand times more useful than any system there is.

Look at the last one, communism, distribution according to need.

This one has the most frightening name. Say communism, and how many hearts tighten, thinking of confiscation, of your things being taken and divided up. Here again let me ask you to loosen that tightening, and go look at what distribution according to need, peeled to the very bottom, actually is.

What it does, in one line, is this. No matter whether you put in effort, or how much, so long as you have need, it gives to you, without condition. Do not rush to say this is unfair, that it breeds idleness. Let me ask you. A newborn baby, has he put in any effort? He has not. By what right does he have milk to drink, arms to hold him, someone to love him? By his need. A patient lying in bed, an old person who can no longer walk, can they put in effort? They cannot. By what right are they seen to, fed, given medicine? Still by their need.

You see, distribution according to need is nothing distant or frightening. It is right there in every home. In a family, the parents earn the money, but when the food is served, is it divided by who brought in the most money? It is not. The child is growing, so an extra bite goes to the child. The old one's teeth are bad, so the soft food is left for the old one. In a home, things were never divided by how much effort you put in, but by who has the need. This is distribution according to need in its plainest form.

It sees to one thing, the people that the first three can by no means settle. Think about it, what do the first three rest on? Slavery rests on your being able to work. Distribution according to labor rests on your putting in effort. Capital rests on your being able to create a return. All three have one premise, that you must be able to put in effort, able to work, able to earn. But in this world there is always a great mass of people who cannot put in effort, cannot work, cannot earn. The newborn baby. The child still in school who can do nothing yet. The person struck down sick in bed. The old one who cannot walk, cannot work. The disabled. The one who has stumbled and cannot get back up. This great mass, the first three systems cannot settle. Slavery does not want them, they cannot work. Distribution according to labor never reaches them, they have no effort to give. Capital looks down on them, they create no return. They are the ones who fall through the holes in the first three nets.

So who catches this great mass that has fallen through? Distribution according to need catches them. It says, you cannot put in effort, no matter. You cannot earn, no matter. So long as you are a person, so long as you have need, what should be yours, you are given. The child's schooling, given without condition, and so there are public schools. The old one's keeping, given without condition, and so there is care for the aged. The patient's treatment, given without condition, and so the emergency room turns no one away. The one too poor to lift the lid off the pot, given a mouthful without condition, and so there is relief. It takes the great mass that fell through the holes of the first three, one by one, catches them from under the net, and settles them.

So this one, distribution according to need, peeled to the very bottom, is also settling people. And the ones it settles are the hardest to settle of all, the ones who can by no means reach a share on their own, the ones this world most easily lets drop. It is the net that hangs at the very bottom of this world. Everything that fell through the first three nets, it is what catches them. A society without this bottom net, and those babies, those patients, those old people, those who have stumbled, truly have no one to catch them, and they fall to the ground, and they die.

The ancestors long ago spoke this heart too. Mencius said, let the people support the living and bury the dead with no regret, able to keep the living while they live, and to see the dead off when they die, with nothing left undone. That, he said, is where the kingly way begins. This heart, that even the weakest should have a way to live and to be kept, is the bottom-catching heart of distribution according to need.

Do not hear the words distribution according to need and think it is out to breed idlers, that it is unfair. Put it back into the home and it all becomes clear. In one home, the three-year-old earns nothing, the eighty-year-old earns nothing, and yet no parent alive stops feeding the child because the child earns nothing, stops keeping the old one because the old one earns nothing. The pot in that home was always divided by who has the need, never by who brings in the most. Distribution according to need, laid bare, is simply this as-it-should-be heart of a home, enlarged to the whole of society. It is not out to breed idlers. What it means to catch are the people who genuinely have no way to earn their own food, the babies, the patients, the old, the disabled, the ones who have stumbled. And which of these is not something you and I could become? You too were once a baby who could not earn. You too will reach the day when you are too old to earn. You too could fall ill some day, or take a stumble. The net of distribution according to need catches not someone else. It catches the very moment that every single person could fall into.

The four are peeled now. Slavery, socialism, capital, communism. Let me nail down the common thing at the bottom. Look back over them. Slavery pens people up to settle them, by the vilest means. Distribution according to labor settles you by the effort you put in, and gives you fairness and freedom. Capital gathers people up to settle them, with the greatest productive power, the most people settled. Distribution according to need settles even the ones who cannot reach, the net at the very bottom. Four names, quarreled over for more than a hundred years, quarreled to the death, as though they were four mortal enemies who could not live under the same sky. But from a height, with the names peeled off, looking to the very bottom, underneath them is the same one thing. Settling people. Letting a person have a place to be, food to eat, a way to live, and to live steady. Four words for it. To live and work in peace.

Do not think small of those four words, to live and work in peace. This is the very thing humanity has dreamed of, for thousands of years, and never quite reached. What does a person want, when it comes down to it? Peeled to the very bottom, is it not just a steady place to live, a mouthful of food, a piece of work that can keep himself and his family, sleep at night, and something to hope for tomorrow? That is to live and work in peace. A child wants this, an old man wants this, the one hauling cement, the one running the little shop, the one sitting in the office, all of them want this. Down all the ages, every system, every claim that flew a great flag, peeled to the bottom, if it truly meant people well, the thing it had to give them was these four words. Able to give it, and it is a good system. Unable to give it, and it is a bad system. It is that simple. And the ones who make things murky, who quarrel to the death, who force you to pick a side, are very often exactly the ones who forgot these four words.

This layer is the single most important landing place of this whole chapter, and even of this whole book. Nail it into your heart, and from now on, looking at every economic quarrel in this world, every claim that flies a great flag, you will have a backbone, and you will not be spooked or spun dizzy by the names. Four tools for settling people, meant to be used together, to make up for one another. Slavery's means are rotten through, and you must guard against its coming back to life. But the other three, the one that goes by labor, the one that gathers strength, the one that catches the bottom, were always meant to be twisted into a single strand, to settle people well and steadily. And yet for a hundred years, people did not take them as four tools, they took them as four mortal flags. The one holding this flag cursed the one holding that. The one who believed this claim hated the one who believed that. Quarreled to the very end, they quarreled away the common thing under their own feet, settling people. The higher the flags were raised, the worse the people, in fact, were settled.

With this layer nailed down, you hold a yardstick. A yardstick ten thousand times more useful than any system. From now on, looking at any economic system, any method, any claim that flies a great flag, do not ask what its name is, do not ask which flag it holds up. Ask it one thing only. Have you settled people well, or not?

The more steadily, the more fully, the more with dignity it settles people, the more it is doing the real work, whatever it is called. And if it settles people badly, drives people to where there is no way to live, lets people fall through the holes and does not see to them, then it is doing wrong, however high it flies its flag.

Take this yardstick back to that hundred-year fight, and you will understand how unjust that fight was. Both sides of the quarrel held up different flags, shouted different names, cursed the other as a mortal foe, and yet what they trod underfoot was the same thing. All of them wanting to settle people. The socialist way settles by labor. The capital way settles by gathering. The communist way settles by catching the bottom. They were always meant to be four tools in one person's two hands, used together, making up for one another. But for a hundred years, people took them for four mortal flags, and quarreling to the end, quarreled away the common thing under their feet.

This is the first great thing that, from a height, you are to see clearly. Put down the flags. Put down the war of names. Come back to the common thing underneath. The economy was never about which flag wins, or which name is right. The economy is one thing. Settle people well.

With this yardstick in your hand, you will never again, your whole life, be spun into a corner or spooked by those names. Before, someone would raise the great flag of a claim in front of you, and you would panic, and feel you had to pick a side, and that to pick the wrong side made you an enemy. Now, with this yardstick in your hand, you do not panic. However great a flag anyone raises, however loud a slogan he shouts, you just take this yardstick and measure him by it, and ask him one thing. Have you settled people well? Fed them, given them a place, let them live with dignity, and it is good, and it does not matter what name it goes by. Driven people to where there is no way to live, let them fall through and go unseen, and it is bad, and its flag flown high does it no good. With one yardstick in hand, every war of names under heaven has to come before this yardstick and, honestly, pass across the scale.

The four systems are four tools for settling people, and not one of them is good by nature, and not one is evil by nature. Even slavery, peeled to the bottom, wanted to pen people in and keep them, only its means were rotten through. The tools are dead things. Which direction they are aimed depends entirely on what kind of hand is holding them. Hold this line firmly, because it is the key to the rest of this chapter. When we spoke of capital in the last section, it was already pointed out to you, this tool, capital, has no direction, and which way it goes depends on the hand holding it. Now that you have seen all four systems, you should understand it better still. These four tools for settling people are all good in themselves, all neutral, and fallen into a good pair of hands they settle people snugly, and fallen into a bad pair of hands they are used to lock people, wring people, push people toward the edge.

See this layer clearly, and you know what the rest of this chapter is going to take you to find. Not a bad name, a bad system, to bring it down. All four systems are good tools, and not one of them should be brought down. What it will take you to find is the hand. The hand that today clutches these four tools and yet aims them to lock people, to wring people. From here on this chapter saves the slave, saves the laborer, saves the one who lives on capital, all along the way saving the people that hand has locked and wrung. And that hand, layer by layer, it brings you closer to, and lets you see clearly, and at the last you will find a thing you never expected. Even that hand is a hand that is locked. But that is a story for later.

So these four tools for settling people, today, into what kind of hand have they fallen? Which way have they been aimed, to settle people better, or, the other way, to push people toward the edge one by one? From here on this chapter takes you, one at a time, to look. Starting with the heaviest one, the one you thought had long since died out and which has in fact changed its skin and is still alive. Slavery. The next section takes you to recognize the people it still has locked, and to let them out.

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