Imagine a banquet held by 100 people, where everyone brings produce of all kinds from their day's work in their garden, or orchard or farm.
Each brings enough for a full day's meal, about 2000 calories worth each.
But then, they divide the food up like this:
40 people are each given a single orange slice and some water.
20 people are each given a serving of ham and potatoes; so now 60 have been served, though those before not as well as these last 20.
20 people are each given a salad topped with blue cheese and vinaigrette and then salmon on rice with a side of broccoli; so now 80 have been served, though those before not as well as these last 20.
10 people are each given a nice large meal, with nuts and breads to start, then one of those nice salads, a couple of appetizers each, a large steak with potatoes on the side, a desert and cappuccino, and multiple glasses of wine throughout; so that now 90 have been served, though those before not as well as these last 10.
5 people are each given a dinner that they simply couldn't finish.. like the last one, but with 90 oz T-bone steak, a whole plate of mashed potatoes, a spread of fruits and cheeses and 2 or 3 deserts; so that 95 have been served, though those before not as well as these last 5.
4 people are each given a full week's set of these really surpassing, 7-course meals, all arrayed nicely in front of them in a building crescendo of delights for the next 7 days; so that 99 have been served, though those before not as well as these last 4.
And the last person is given a month of these 7-course meals; it is so much food that is not even clear how to get it all back and store it at home. And not a single other person has been so well served as this last one.
What a terrible banquet! Plentiful, yet so many going to bed hungry that night, while a few others are given so much that it will surely go bad and rot. Only the 4th group, which has only 1/10th of the people, gets a nice large meal but not more, gets about as good as it gives.
This is of course an allegory to how our wealth is actually distributed in the US today, and every day. Instead of dollars per person I've used calories per meal to choose the menu. And if you choose to identify "our" society as the world's, it only gets worse.
Of course, there is a potential fallacy, in that it sounds like this banquet is really describing how just today's produce is being shared, whereas we tend to think of wealth as already-accumulated produce, from work previously done, perhaps long ago.
But is this really a fallacy? Only, I think, if you believe that accumulated produce can't, or shouldn't, be brought to the banquet. And that is the real fallacy this story is constructed to expose. Would you not share jam from last season's cupboard for the bread you made to share today? Is the wealth of society not society's?
What if we started anew each day and said All that I have, I share with all, so long as you do too, all together fairly, so that we might share a nice meal together and all sleep well tonight!
I would live in this world. Would you?
I certainly don't want to continue with the current dinner parties.
