Once there was a wealthy miser who lived outside a crowded town.
Many of the townspeople worked for the miser -- more and more of them, in fact.
The miser angered the townspeople. The miser collected money from far and wide, most of it from people who lived in distant lands far from the town. The townspeople who worked for the miser were handsomely paid, and their wages in turn were spent in boutiques and taverns their neighbors owned, keeping many of them fed, clothed, and sheltered. But the miser also kept much of the money he collected to himself.
Even as some prospered by working for the miser, or by catering to the miser's minions, life grew worse for others. As the miser recruited more people to work in the town, the town council refused to allow more shelter to be built. The council did this not because they were opposed to shelter, but because many townspeople owned shelter and profited from the shortage. These shelter-owning townspeople were more likely to vote in council elections. The townspeople who worked for the miser weren't troubled by the high cost of shelter as the miser paid them enough to afford it. Those who only rented shelter and who did not work for the miser were left out. Many of them gave up on finding shelter in the town and searched in the hinterland. Many of them found themselves on the street.
Eventually, all the townspeople were angry but for different reasons. Some townspeople resented the miser and his minions for making the town more crowded and expensive. Some townspeople were quite happy to have the town be expensive, for it made them wealthy, but resented the conditions in the streets. Many of these townspeople also thought well of the miser because he had been personally generous to them.
The town council sought a way to make everyone happy, but found it impossible. They could move people into shelter from the street more rapidly by repealing the law that banned new shelter, but that would anger the shelter-owners who profited from scarcity. The council could sweep the streets and send the unsheltered to the hinterland, satisfying the shelter-owners but angering those who cared for the unsheltered and others who remembered a simpler time. As a compromise, the council sought to help the unsheltered in various ways but found their efforts expensive and ineffective, which only served to exasperate the entire populace. The problem grew worse by the day, to no one's satisfaction.
The council hatched a plan. Perhaps inspired by another civic leader who had once proposed to build a big beautiful thing and have somebody else pay for it, they decided to raid the miser's castle. The proceeds of this raid would be used to build a tiny number of new shelters, perhaps one-twentieth of what the town really needed, perhaps one-hundredth. But this would make it look like the council was doing something about the problem, all while protecting the wealth of the shelter-owners to whom they owed their positions. Sometimes it is better to appear as though you are solving a problem than to actually solve it. Particularly if you are an elected official.
The plan had a weakness. It was illegal for the council to raid the miser's castle, for he did not live in the town. The overlords governing the town required all raids upon a class of castle to be conducted proportionately, and expressly forbade conducting raids outside the town walls. The council would need to find a more clever way to execute the raid. So they proposed a new law amenable to their overlords: that the miser must pay to the town a fixed sum for every townsperson who worked for him. They announced the proposed law with great fanfare, pointing to the miser's great wealth and greed. They knew that the proposed law would not appeal to the beneficiaries of the miser's generosity, but bet that these beneficiaries would be outnumbered by those angered by wealth and greed.
The plan had another weakness. While the goal was to extract money directly from the miser, it remained the miser's choice of whether to pay from his own pockets, pay by being less generous to the townspeople he employed, or by ceasing to employ townspeople altogether. The miser knew well that hundreds of other towns clamored to enjoy the largesse he might direct toward them.
While scolding the miser for his wealth and greed, the council secretly hoped that the very characteristics they ascribed to the miser would suddenly and inexplicably disappear, causing him to decide to pay from his own pocket when ultimately he did not have to. The council was whispered tales of other misers in other towns who had been the targets of similar laws, who had either withdrawn their minions from the town or made the minions pay. In fact, there were no tales to be heard of a miser actually choosing to pay from his own pocket. For what kind of miser pays from his own pocket when he can pay from another's instead? The council ignored the tales they heard and clung to their vision of a magic reawakening in the miser's castle.
And then one day, the miser spoke. Through a spokesperson, as misers are wont to do. The miser would not countenance paying the council's tribute. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. The beneficiaries of the miser's largesse -- those on his payroll, and those who owned the shelter his actions had made more valuable -- shouted and spat at the council. "Let the miser be the miser, you are powerless to change him," they proclaimed. The council and their allies, in turn, argued that the law was not really meant to target the miser after all, that the true targets were more numerous if far, far less wealthy. All while cursing the miser for his wealth and greed.
The council, angered though they continued to be about the miser's unwillingness to betray the attributes that had produced his wealth, came to understand the limitations of their power. They had no power to directly raid the miser's castle, and no power to force the miser's hand. They had no power to prevent the miser's employees from moving in, and no power to prevent others from moving out. They had only the powers their overlords allowed them, very few powers indeed. The only power they truly possessed was to change the law that forbade the construction of new shelter, a power they were too cowardly to use.
Time passed, and the town became increasingly populated by those on the miser's payroll, and other beneficiaries of his largesse. The councillors were replaced, one by one, with persons allied with this new majority. The long-time townspeople, who had been there long before the miser arrived, found themselves more crowded into and eventually priced out of shelter. Not to mention out of work, for the miser brought his allies various magic devices that enabled them to feed, clothe, transport, and entertain themselves without the messiness of human employment. Some left for the hinterland. Others remained in the streets, until eventually the new council majority decreed that they too should be swept up and spirited away.
But in the town, all was quiet, all was peaceful, the botched raid an increasingly distant memory.
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