Black sheep

Once upon a time there was a country in which everyone was a thief.

Armed with master keys and blackout lanterns, they go out in the evening and burglarize neighbors' homes. When they returned home at dawn with their stolen goods, they always found that their own house had been stolen.

And so they lived together happily. There are no unfortunate people, for everyone steals from everyone else, who steals from everyone else, and so on, until the last person goes to the first burglar's house. Trade in this country is inevitably a two-way deception between buyer and seller. The government is a criminal institution that steals from its subjects, who are only interested in deceiving the government. So life is smooth, no rich and poor.

One day -- no one knows how -- an honest man came and settled there. In the evening, instead of going out with a bag and lantern, he stayed at home smoking and reading novels.

The thief came, saw the light on, didn't go in.

This went on for some time. Then they felt it necessary to make it clear to him that, even if he wanted to live his life doing nothing, there was no reason for him to interfere with other people's work. He stayed home every night, which meant that one family had no food the next day.

The honest man feels powerless to resist such logic. From then on he went out at night like them and came home in the morning, but he did not steal. He is honest. There's nothing you can do about it. He went to the bridge in the distance and watched the river flow under it. Every time he came home, he found his house stolen.

The honest man found himself penniless in less than a week; He had nothing and nothing to eat. But it was not nothing, for it was his own fault; No, the problem is that his behavior upset other people. For he lets others steal everything from him and steals nothing from others; So someone would come home at dawn and find the house untouched -- an honest man would have gone in and robbed it. After a while, those who had not been robbed found that they were richer than others and did not want to steal any more. What is worse, those who go into an honest man's house to steal always find it empty, and so they become poor.

Meanwhile, the rich men, like honest men, have formed the habit of going to the bridge at night, and watching the river pass under it. This makes things more confusing, because it means more people are getting richer and more people are getting poorer.

Now, the rich people find that if they go to the bridge every day, they will soon be poor too. They thought, "Let's hire the poor guys to steal for us." They signed the contract and settled on wages and how they would be divided. They were still thieves, of course, and still lied to each other. But the situation shows that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Some people are so rich that they don't even need to steal or hire someone to steal to stay rich. But when they stop stealing, they become poor, because poor people steal from them. So they hired the poorest of the poor to help them guard their wealth against theft by the poor, which meant building police stations and prisons.

So, within a few years of the honest Man's appearance, people no longer spoke of stealing or being stolen, but of rich and poor; But all of them are still thieves.

The only honest man was the one at the beginning, but he soon died of hunger.