Commonwealth: A Novel of Utopia, part 3, chapter 2
Author’s Note: This is an excerpt from my novel Commonwealth. The rest of today’s installment is free, but only on my Patreon site. If you want to read the next part today, it’s already up on Patreon as well. You can sign up for as little as $1/month, or $2 for exclusive author’s notes and behind-the-scenes material. There’s also a table of contents for all published chapters.
“These places are where your fellow students come from,” Will said harshly. “Not to mention your family servants, the people who grow the food you eat, and the people who mine the fuel that heats your home. All those you never deigned to notice, the ones who make your life possible. As to why they live there, they have no choice. They’re born here, they survive as best they can, and most of them die here. Your society makes it virtually impossible to do anything else.”
“But they could get rich if they tried,” she said haltingly, as if reciting something she had once heard. “People are poor because they choose to be. If they worked hard, they could make something of themselves.”
“Do you think so? How? The mind is like a muscle; it only realizes its potential through training. If your family has no money to pay for your education, it doesn’t matter if you have the greatest brain in the world.
“But let’s say you dropped out of school and were still able – somehow, through some implausible magic – to become a super-genius industrialist with a head full of world-changing business ideas. How would you make money?
“Who would you sell to? The other people in your town? They’re as poor as you are! The rich, in their private walled enclaves? Their security would stop you at the door.
“The only way to make money is to cultivate connections with people who have it to spend. But the only way to make those connections is to be born into wealth in the first place. The rich mingle only with the rich. The poor stay poor. The class structure perpetuates itself.”