The trio left the city before dawn and rode west into the hill country. They rode in silence for hours. Even Quinn seemed enraptured by the beauty of the wooded hillsides as the sun rose behind them.
Zebulun spoke Davion’s name without warning, startling him out of his reverie.
"Hm? What?" asked Davion.
"You read a lot," said Zebulun. "You must know many things."
"I like to think so," said Davion. "I would hate to think I spent years studying and learned nothing."
"What makes people poor?" asked Zebulun.
"Well," said Davion, "it’s complicated."
"Simplify it for me."
"Hm," said Davion. "Let me think."
He paused for so long Zebulun wondered if he would answer, but he finally spoke. "Basically," he said, "it’s the same for people as it is for any animal. One’s wealth is based on what resources one has available to them and how much energy one expends to obtain wealth from said resources. For example: a panther in the eastern wood eats well with little effort, but one stuck in a desert would be poor even with great effort."
"It’s the same with men?" said Zebulun.
"It is," said Davion, "but men have another limitation: the part of their labor that is taken by other men. One can have ample resources and expend great energy, yet still be poor because others have taken your wealth by force. This is the case in the kingdom today. Probably all kingdoms."
"You’re not talking about common thieves," said Zebulun.
"No," said Davion. "They do plenty of harm, but less so than the institutional ones."
"Who are they?"
"There’s a number of them," said Davion. "I wouldn’t know where to begin."
"Give me the top three."
Davion took another long pause, then spoke. "If I had to narrow it down, I would say…monopoly, taxes, and usury."
"Monopoly?"
"Yes — one person or class of persons having complete control over something. The most obvious one is land: more for one person means less for everyone else. If all the land of a kingdom is claimed, and you’re born without any, then you can’t work for yourself. You have to work for someone else. If nothing else, you have to pay rent to whatever lord or prince owns the land you live and work on."
"What about freeholders?" asked Zebulun. "They seem to do okay."
"They do better than the peasants, true," said Davion. "They could do even better if they weren’t heavily taxed by the kingdom on what they produce."
"What other kind of monopoly is there?"
"Anything that can’t be produced," said Davion. "In nature, this is nothing more than the land, the sea, and the sky. But men have created all manner of artificial monopolies. There’s the official charters from the king that says only a handful of people may produce certain goods, which leads to high prices for those who need them. Then there’s the guilds, which prevent people from competing with their craftsmen to keep wages high. Not being blessed by the kingdom, they have to use entrepreneurial violence. But it amounts to the same."
Zebulun thought for a moment. "What about taxes?"
"Ugh, taxes," said Davion. "As if it wasn’t bad enough that the common folk pay around a third of their wages in rent to a lord or a prince, they have to pay another third or so in taxes to the kingdom the privilege of working, buying, and selling. The kingdom taxes tools, livestock, commerce… the list goes on. The combination of rent and taxes means the average person has to live on one third of what they produce."
They rode in silence for a time as Zebulun pondered Davion’s words.
"And usury?" asked Zebulun.
"Given the above," said Davion, "the poor often don’t have enough money to buy food. In lean times, they must borrow money or starve. Knowing their desperation, the moneylenders are able to charge extortionate rates of interest, locking them in a cycle of perpetual debt. If they miss payments, the debt compounds and grows greater by the day. They wind up giving much of the last third of their income to the moneylenders."
"So the people are left with nothing," said Zebulun.
"At the brink of starvation," said Davion. "This makes them easy to control. They have few options, and no escape."
"There’s another, more subtle kind of usury as well," said Davion, "this one done by the kingdom itself. Have you noticed that the coins of the realm have gotten lighter over the years?"
"I thought they felt different over time," said Zebulun, "but it was subtle enough I couldn’t be sure."
"Our coins used to be ninety-nine percent copper, silver, or gold," said Davion. "Over the years, when the kingdom needed funds, the treasury would take old coins it had collected in taxes, melt them down, mix them with base metals, and reissue them as if they were the same coin. They did it slowly enough that most people didn’t notice, but those who did would horde the old coins and spend the new. With more coins in circulation, prices went up, making life more expensive for everyone. Our coins today are only one percent precious metal. Ninety-nine percent of their value has been stolen over time."
Zebulun thought for a moment. "What else?"
"I’ll have to think on it some more," said Davion. "I’m sure there’s far more things I haven’t comprehended yet, but I’m fairly sure those are the big three."
"Just fairly sure?" asked Zebulun. "How confident are you?"
"On this subject, I’d say ninety-nine percent. I’ve read a lot of ancient writings on this, and they seem to come to similar conclusions no matter the time or place."
"Not one hundred percent?" asked Zebulun.
"I never give myself a one hundred percent chance of being right about anything," said Davion. "There’s always a chance I could be wrong. There could be a flaw in my reasoning, or I could have mistaken premises somewhere."
"Sounds humble," said Zebulun.
"It’s just self-honesty," said Davion. "As much as I know, I know I’ll never know everything. There is always more to learn."
Zebulun nodded at looked off to the horizon. "Thanks," he said. "You’ve given me a lot to think about."
Davion smiled, nodded, and went back into his thoughts.