Black sheep

In the evenings, armed with skeleton keys and shaded lanterns, they go out and burgle neighbors. When they returned home at dawn with their stolen goods, they always found that their own house had been broken into.

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

One day -- no one knows how -- an honest man settled in the area. In the evenings, instead of going out with a bag and lamp, he stayed at home smoking and reading novels.

The thief came, saw the light was 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 wished to live by doing nothing, there was no reason for him to interfere. He stayed at home every night, which meant that one family was out of rations the next day.

The honest man felt powerless to resist such logic. He went out in the evening and returned in the morning as they did, but he did not steal. He is honest. There's nothing you can do about it. He went to the far bridge and watched the river go under it. Every time he comes home, he finds his house broken into.

In less than a week the honest man found himself broke; He had nothing to eat. But it was not nothing, for it was his own fault; No, the problem is that his behavior upset the others. Because he let others steal everything from him and stole nothing from others; So that someone would come home at dawn and find that the house had not been touched -- that honest men should have broken in. Before long, the people who had not been robbed found that they were richer than others and did not want to steal any more. To make matters worse, those who steal from honest men always find them empty, and are therefore poor.

Meanwhile, the rich, like the honest, had formed the habit of going to the bridge at night. They also watched the river flow under it. This makes things even more confusing, because it means that more people are getting richer and more people are getting poorer.

Now, the rich people found that if they went to the bridge every day, they would soon be poor too. So they thought, "We'll hire the poor to steal for us." They signed the contract, finalizing the salary and how they would share it. Of course, they're still thieves, they're still cheating each other. But the situation shows that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Some have become so rich that they can stay rich without having to steal or hire someone to steal at all. But as soon as they stop stealing, they will become poor, because poor people will steal from them. So they hired the poorest of the poor to help guard their wealth against theft by the poor, which meant building police stations and prisons.

Therefore, a few years after the honest man appeared, people no longer spoke of stealing or being stolen, but of rich and poor; But they were all thieves.

The only honest one was the one at the beginning, and he soon died, starved to death.