In a bustling meadow stood a factory, and in it labored a Grasshopper who fitted gears from dawn to dusk, turning out fine widgets by the dozen. One evening, footsore and irritable, he complained to a wise old Owl who kept the books of the local economy.
"Owl," said the Grasshopper, "something is wrong. I make these widgets with my own six legs and steady hands. Yet when I go to buy one for myself, the price is more than I earn in a whole day's work! I make the thing, and still I cannot afford it. Where has all my value gone?"
The Owl blinked slowly and adjusted her spectacles. "Tell me, Grasshopper: when you sit at your bench, does the metal simply appear before you?"
"Well, no," said the Grasshopper. "It arrives each morning by cart."
"And before that?"
"I suppose... someone must dig it from the ground."
"Just so," said the Owl. "Deep in the hills, a Mole spends her days tunneling for ore, her claws aching long before you arrive at your bench. Then a Badger loads it onto a train, and a weary old Dog drives that train through the night so the metal reaches your factory by morning. Before you ever touch it, a Fox at another forge has already smelted the raw ore into something your hands can shape. And each of them, in turn, relies on tools that still others labored to build: shovels forged by smiths whose hammers were made by smiths before them, and so on, back further than even I can count."
The Grasshopper's antennae drooped. "So the widget isn't only my work."
"It is a great many hours of a great many creatures, braided together," said the Owl. "Your labor is real, and it is honest, and it matters. But it is one thread in a very long cord. The price you pay reflects the Mole's ache and the Dog's sleepless night as much as it reflects your own."
The Grasshopper sat with this a while. "Then who does keep the value I add?"
"You do, but only your share of it," said the Owl. "And take heart: your widgets, once finished, become someone else's raw material. A Beaver downstream will use them to build pumps, and a Squirrel after her will use those pumps to irrigate an orchard, and on the chain runs, far past where either of us can see."
Moral: No one creates value alone. Every hour of our work stands on the labor of countless hands before us, and just as often becomes the ground on which countless others build.
