There exists a minority: the productive people and firms who graze and create. In this tale, we will call this group the "sheep." The wolves in this story organize and vote. Everyone calls it democracy, and the language of fairness sounds reassuring. The wolves proudly introduce “democratic socialism,” and promise kinder outcomes without changing the basic arithmetic of democracy. If the rules allow it, a majority can decide how much of the sheep’s output gets redirected. The names change; but the incentives don’t.
Whether or not this story turns into a predatory tale depends on constraints. Where there are hard limits such as clear property rights, independent courts, budgets that have to balance, rules that are difficult to rewrite, solid constitutions, well, in those lands, the menu is mostly off the ballot. Where those limits are softer, control of government becomes a coveted prize, where politics organizes around access to that prize instead of providing solutions.
You can see this tale play out in New York City. There’s a small group of sheep, high earners, investors, and firms who also bear a big share of the costs. They know they are on the menu, but treat it as a natural state of being a sheep. The “wolves” in this story aren’t really villains; they’re coalitions using the rules available to them. But the “sheep” aren’t exactly helpless; they’re productive and have the means to flee the pasture.
And when the sheep start to drift out of the pasture, something slowly changes. Over time, there are fewer sheep to crop the grass and fertilize it. At first, nothing seems different. The votes still happen, the rules still stand, the language still sounds right, the wolves are fed. But the pasture stops renewing itself. Less grazing, less growth, less to go around. What looked like a stable system quietly thins out. And by the time the wolves ask where all the dinner went, why the meadow looks like a garbage dump, it's already too late.
Turns out the problem was never really how to divide the harvest through democratic socialism.
It was forgetting who made it grow in the first place.