There’s an
insoluble issue at the center of any consideration of fairness. No matter where
you live in the world, chances are that place was previously occupied by a
culture different from your own. Chances are almost equally good that your
homeland, wherever it is, was taken from its previous occupants by force. The evidence
indicates that there are very, very few locations on the planet that have been
occupied by only one culture, and there are relatively few convincing stories
of peaceful assimilation.
Is the forcible
conquest of another culture fair? I think most people would say it is not.
However, it is so consistent a theme in human history that attempting to weigh
the territorial rights of one culture against another generally leads us into a
dialectic quagmire from which the societies cannot extract themselves in less
than a couple of centuries, if ever.
For the sake of
this discussion, I’m going to limit the question of fairness to one generation.
Let’s confine our discussion to the means by which we acquired our property
from its previous owner, whose name is Bill. We paid him for it. He believes he
received a fair price. We agree. We’re friends today. Because I can’t
meaningfully address the claims of the several different cultures who lived
here before us, the seller and I will call it “fairly acquired” and move on to
other areas of concern.
In the background
of any discussion of land ownership is, of course, the question of economic
disparity. Not everyone can afford to buy a farm like ours. It is not luxurious
or glamorous, but it cost more than an average home in Kansas. (It cost a lot less than an average
home in Seattle, San
Francisco or New York,
however.) Is it fair that some people have more money than others? Should we,
in the name of fairness, refrain from owning things that an average family
might not be able to afford?
Our North American
culture’s belief in free enterprise implies a belief in economic mobility. We
believe in the potential for economic self-improvement. We see ourselves as
industrious people pulling ourselves up by their own bootstraps. Our society still
delivers on the promise of that vision. Right now many of the world’s
wealthiest individuals – people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Larry
Ellison – have accumulated their wealth and power during their own lifetimes.
Those three individuals are among the four wealthiest people in the world at
the time of this writing. Three out of four of the richest people in the world are
Americans who built their fortunes through intelligence, enterprise and hard
work during their own lifetimes. Seven out of the world’s 10 richest people are
self-made billionaires from four different nations:
1. Bill Gates’
father was a Seattle
lawyer. His family was affluent, but not wealthy, at least not by American standards.
Gates founded Microsoft and helped invent the first widely distributed
operating system for personal computers.
2. Investor Warren
Buffett grew up in Omaha, Nebraska’s, middle class. His grandfather
owned a grocery store. His father was a stockbroker who was elected to the U.S.
Congress.
3. Larry Ellison
was born to an unwed mother and raised by an aunt and uncle in a two-bedroom apartment
in Chicago. He
dropped out of college to move to California
and write software. He founded the database behemoth Oracle.
4. Ingvar Kamprad
grew up on a farm in southern Sweden
and used his childhood savings to start IKEA, the international furniture
retailer.
5. Karl Albrecht’s
father was a miner and then a baker’s assistant in Essen, Germany.
Karl and his brother, Theo, founded the international discount grocery chain,
Aldi.
6. Theo Albrecht
is Karl Albrecht’s brother and partner.
7. Amancio Ortega
began his career as a boy doing odd jobs in shirt stores around La Coruna, Galicia,
Spain.
He built his fortune in the fashion industry with dozens of international
brands. His father was a railway worker.
The other three
people in the top 10 inherited their money – only 30 percent of the group.
Economic mobility is a visible reality in many places around the world.
When people talk
about economic disparity they call forth two contrasting images of fairness. On
one side is the question of whether any system can be called fair if it rewards
some human beings with mansions and private jets while others do without adequate
food. Conversely, would our economic system be fair if it didn’t offer
compensation to those who work harder and invent more? And without economic
incentives, wouldn’t human beings be less innovative? Aren’t economic disparity
– and economic mobility – important sources of energy for human endeavor?
Tacitly, most
nations have codified their economic theories based on a compromise
incorporating both concepts, while perfecting neither. There are hungry and
homeless people in most countries. Nearly every country taxes its wealthiest
residents to provide social programs to its neediest, while allowing the wealthy
to remain wealthy. No one, it seems, is satisfied with his own country’s
system. We are generally even less satisfied with the systems of other
countries.
As always, our
sense of fairness evolves and changes.
So, is it fair
that Carolyn and I should have a farm of our very own? By American standards we
are far from wealthy, but we are better off than most. Perhaps the answer to
this question from a personal perspective is that, yes, we think we’ve achieved
what we’ve achieved in a relatively fair system and we do not feel guilty for
living at Rancho Cappuccino. We feel fortunate. We are conscious that many have
less. We share a little through charities, including the Heifer Project that
distributes food and livestock to poor people around the world. It’s a way of
recognizing our good fortune. In the future, we hope to share more.
We sell our
animals for meat at prices most people can afford – a little more than the price
for supermarket meat. When possible, we donate meat through charities that can
turn it into meals for the needy.
We don’t hire
illegal aliens. In fact, we don’t need any employees except a friend who stays
at the farm to keep an eye on things when we’re out of town. Another friend, a
fellow farmer, shares labor with us on the rare occasions when an extra body is
needed, and we return the favor.
That’s how we work
on being fair to people less fortunate. Fairness – like contagiousness, beauty
and abundance – is not so much a standard to be achieved as it is a criterion
to be interpreted and applied. We strive for fairness, even though it can’t be
clearly defined, much less perfected. In the striving, I think we create a
better world. We don’t exploit workers. We produce meat in ways that protect
the environment for every living thing that shares our habitat.
But is the whole
system fair to the livestock? Find out next week.
For further optimistic discussion about our future, read
Beautiful and Abundant
by Bryan Welch and connect with
Beautiful and Abundant
on Facebook.
