Sour grapes, dog in the manger, there are numerous terms to describe the various types of envy we see in the world around us. The details might vary, but in general, it consists of insisting that if I can't have something than no one else should have it either, or, in a more general sense, that I must benefit in every case or else no one else can. It is an ugly emotion, and one we generally dismiss as petty and childish, but also one that appears constantly, and without apology in political rhetoric.

Imagine if your child were to see his friend playing with a toy and said "He shouldn't have that, because I don't." Would you praise that child? Or tell him that some people have more than others, and that another child having that toy does not harm him?

Then why is it when we have a politician who says that the economy is defective because the rich rose 5% in income, while the poor only rose 2%, we praise and elect him?

It is ugly in everyday life to see someone who resents anyone who does better, has more, or otherwise surpasses him. It is clearly the mark of a small person, or insecurity and weakness to be so intimidated by the success of others. Yes, I admit, we all at some time have felt a momentary twinge of envy. All of us have had that second where we asked "why should he have so much more?" But, as adults, almost all of us then remind ourselves that it is petty to think in that way, that his success does not impoverish us, and that it only lowers us to think in such ways.

Unfortunately, what we recognize when dealing with individuals in everyday life, we forget when listening to politicians talking about abstractions such as "the rich" or "CEOs" or "Wall Street bankers" or some other faceless group. Once we are directed to envy an anonymous mass, we let those feelings run wild, and we give in to the worst of our base instincts. We accept that the success of another impoverishes us, that somehow dragging down another will raise us, and otherwise accept ideas we would not if we were dealing with specific individuals.

Next time a politician appeals to envy, please remember two things.

First, "the rich", "Wall Street brokers" and the rest are people, real people, with faces and lives and families and their own interests and loves and hates. Politicians want you to think of them as aliens, or maybe some other form of life, but they are not. That "rich" fellow might be the doctor who came in at three in the morning to perform an emergency appendectomy that saved your life. Or the lawyer who helped your business avoid a lawsuit. Or maybe even you, as the definition of "rich" changes swiftly. Let us not forget that in many cases, the faceless group we are being taught o hate will one day include us as well.

Second, we need to recall the economy is not a zero sum game. Trade is a win-win transaction, at least in a free economy ("Clarifying a Reality of Capitalism"). The men who get rich are those who fulfill the wants felt by the most people most desperately. And so logically, if you tear down the rich, you destroy those who provide the goods and services that fulfill most of our desires. In other words, you either deprive us of goods and services, or, at best, leave the less efficient providers, who give us less at higher costs. We may get a brief thrill from the pittance we get when we plunder the coffers of the rich, but in the long run we lose, as that tiny bit of wealth can never replace all the goods we have lost, nor make up for the lack of satisfaction and higher costs.

Allow me to make a simple analogy. When Rome was ruling western Europe, it represented the pinnacle of culture and learning. One could live a life there one could not anywhere outside of the empire. Medicine, music, learning, entertainment, food, art, everything there was unavailable in the rest of the world.

So, let us ask, if you are a young goth, which would gain you more? To join a plundering band, raid the capital, take a massive amount of gold and jewels, and rule over the shattered fragments of Rome? Or migrate to Rome, as a lowly resident alien, work for a pittance, and gradually rise in wealth? (This assumes, of course, there was more economic mobility than really existed. At the time Diocletian's price controls, and the creation of inherited professions made economic movement difficult for most.)

The simple truth is, however much gold and jewels one plundered, they would not buy you as much as a few coppers in Rome before the fall. Once Rome was destroyed, all that learning and culture was gone. All that gold would buy only slaves, the proceeds of pig farmers, and maybe a bit of plunder that you could not appreciate. (It is telling that in most such sacks of large cities, we lost huge numbers of documents, as they were used to fuel fires by those who could not appreciate them.)

Or to put this more simply, as a rich plunderer, you could enjoy nothing more than the luxuries of a barbarian. As a poor migrant, you could still hire the time of a teacher, visit a doctor, see a play, or buy a scroll. You might lack the superficial wealth of gold and jewels that the plunderer had, but with the small wealth you had you could buy things that were simply not available to the plunderer.

It reminds me of the famous aphorism from the French revolution, said when Lavoisier was executed. "It took but a moment to cut off his head, and France may not grow another like it in a century." The plunderers always think they are poor only because they lack the appearance of wealth, they forget that those holding the wealth also create the wealth the poor enjoy. Once you eliminate them, everyone is impoverished.

And that is the one thing we all need to recall when appeals are made to envy. The rich do not make us poor. Instead, the rich, even the supposed "idle rich" ("A Great Quote", "The "Lucky" Rich") make us richer. They are not "robber barons" but producers. They do not exploit workers, but employ them, providing them with capital that increases their productivity, and patents and techniques they would not otherwise have. We must recall this whenever we become envious.

As I said several times, the economy is not a zero sum game, and trade is always a win-win transaction.

POSTSCRIPT

Much of what I argued can be read in "Greed Versus Evil" and "In Praise of Contracts " among others. Similar topics are also addressed in "Planning For Imperfection", "Fairness and the Free Market", "The Triumph of Good" and "Selling Yourself Cheap". I wrote about envy before in my posts "Envy Kills", "Envy And Analogy" and "He's Bad So He Must Be Wrong". And finally, I discussed the appeals to envy in some specific cases in "A Really Foolish Idea", "Greed", "Greed Part 2", "A Little More On CEO Salaries", "Another Bad Idea", "Pointless or Destructive", "Symmetry and Greed", "Saving Us From Lower Prices", "Price Gouging", ""True" Prices", "Excuse Me?", "Misunderstanding Economics", "When Did We Become Liberals?", "D i c k Morris Gets His Economics Wrong Again" , "Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, Or The Logical Implications of Price Gouging Laws", "Capitalism and Its Consequences", "Moral For Me, But Not For Thee", "Utopianism and Disaster", "Life Is Not Fair - And Trying To Make It So Makes Things Worse", "Authoritarian Oil Talk" and "Antibiotics, Automobiles and the Free Market".