Socrates: Well, Xanthippe, this is a bit far-fetched and a long way round to say what I was about to say when you interrupted me, namely, that we have reached an impasse. It seems that we may neither ignore our fellow-men or rule him. That is what comes of dividing a problem up and following each strand until we reach contradictory conclusions. It seems we can conclude nothing. I sometimes wonder why I bother with this philosophizing. So, then, either we help no one or we have to help everyone. Is that where we are?

Xanthippe: I don't think it is that simple. Suppose, for example, that one cartmaker was a hardworking honest man, but his business was ruined by the demagogues in the Assembly. Maybe they taxed him too much or allowed the Phoenicians to flood the market or perhaps they started a war that cost so much that no one had enough money to buy a cart. It would not be fair, would it, to treat this honest man in the same way we would treat a lazy and dishonest businessman who squandered his money on fast horses and faster women.

S: But, Xanthippe, suppose I agreed--what then? If Athens gives money to the makers, won't the city end up owning their businesses, at least as a partner? And, we have already established that politicians--even Plato's experts--should not run the market. And we are going to do this,for what? So their slaves can live high on the hog?

X: Let us set aside the question of the slaves, but what about the free workers? Should they be ruined and reduced to begging or to selling themselves into slavery in some foreign place, simply because the makers or the city made bad decisions?

S: But you said earlier, they were overpaid....

Pheidippides: They certainly are, the worthless scum...

Xanthippe: Too much? According to whose philosophy? It is one thing for Plato make an argument but not you.

Ph. What do you mean?

X: Look, Plato here would say there is a perfect right or wrong in every human transaction--right, Plato?

Plato: Yes, of course. It's a bit like math or geometry, where there is only one right answer.

Xanthippe: Then, it should be possible to calculate, in a rough way, what a good general is worth, or a skilled potter, or a craftsman who makes wheels.

Pl: Yes, of course. I don't say that I can come up with the exact numbers today, but let us say the manual laborer should earn enough to feed a wife and children but not enough to waste on trips to the Olympic Games or on buying a chariot or two of his own. Base men of this type, if they have too much money or too much leisure, can only hurt themselves, because they are not morally free.

X: I wonder if you would be so glib about the way poor people waste money, if your own family were not so rich? Any way, I grant you the point. It is better for men without higher interests to work hard every day and only enjoy enough leisure to take part in religious festivals and family gatherings. Watching athletic contests or buying expensive clothing and carts only degrades them. At any rate, Pheidippides, that is Plato, who belows in universal principles of justice, but surely you don't think that you can say there is such a thing as a just price or a fair wage!

Phedippides: Certainly not. Since it is every man for himself, the employer is entitled to pay as little as he can get away with, even if his workmen's wives have to take in laundry to afford bread and oil.

X: As little, but also as much as the employees can force him to pay?

Ph: Well, I suppose so...

X: So, if the cartmakers, for whatever reason, hae agreed to pay those exorbitant salaries, you cannot blame anyone or say it is unfair. It's just the way the market works, and there is no right and wrong in the market, which is a force of nature.

Ph: But what about this? Skilled carpenters and wheelwrights are in short supply. What if they formed a conspiracy to keep wages high, by walking off the job, just when a big order came in? This way they would unfairly extort higher pay from their employers.

X. That's just the way the market works...

Ph: But what if the Assembly sided with the employees, who may have bribed the politicians?

X. That's just the way the market works.

Ph: But what if...

Xanthippe: That's just the way the market works.

Ph: All right, I get your point. You want me to say that in the absence of an external standard of right and wrong, people--employers and employees, buyers and sellers--can do anything they can get away with because the market is, like money itself, amoral. It doesn't matter how you make money, so long as you don't get caught stealing or selling your body, because money is money and you can spend it on anything you like.

X: Exactly. No one who believes only in the Free Market can believe even in that, because the Market has no means of justifying its existence. If I were a businessmen and could gain control over the entire market, my rivals--who failed to stop me or create their own monopoly--could hardly cry "foul," because there is not such things as fair. Yes, I know they always talk about fair play and honest deals, but that is because we are Greeks, not savages, and teh gods have taught us rules of right and wrong that these marketeers appeal to. They may even believe them, but they are inconsistent with with your basic principle, Pheidippides, and, for the most part, with theirs.

Socrates: Well, I see we have reached another impasse, Xanthippe. You are truly my wife and have really been listening all those years when you were saying, "Yes, dear" just to shut me up. What shall we do about those cartmakers, then, flip a coin?

Ph:

BE CONTINUED

**The story of Pasion is true, but it takes place in the next century.

*** To be honest, Plato was only 9 when Pheidippides was sent to study with Socrates, that is, when Aristophanes put on the Clouds .

I know this is being used to teach a lesson, but ugh it makes me cringe.

Xanthippe: It certainly seems so.

Socrates: Then where does this leave us?

Xanthippe: Why ask me? You're the philosopher in the family. I have no idea where we are.

Socrates: But surely you do. First, we are agreed that Pheidippides' philosophy, which he got third hand from the Scythian she-wolf, is false. We cannot simply dismiss our obligation to fellow-citizens by saying that everyone is master of himself.

Certainly we cannot.

So we have to have some concern for the fate of the cartmakers, even if they live in far off Peiraeus.

Yes.

Because if we rejected them, we would proceed to reject our neighbors, our kinsmen, our children, and even-though it is monstrous to say--our parents?

Yes again.

But we also had to conclude that Plato was wrong, more wrong in some ways even than Pheidippides?

--Yes--

Because there are no experts to whom we could safely entrust our fortunes, much less our families?

Xanthippe: Yes, Socrates, but it occurs to me that there is another reason.

Another reason? You surprise me with your "reasons."

Xanthippe: Well, if we do to Plato's argument what we did to Pheidippides'--

Socrates: You mean, extrapolate the consequences?

Xanthippe: Yes, but in reverse..

Socrates: I don't follow you.

Xanthippe: It's easy. Imagine we had a set of experts to run all the business in Athens, why should we stop there?

Why indeed?

Xanthippe: Perhaps I could let Plato answer this. Listen, my young idealist, you think Pheidippides is wrong in saying, "every man for himself"?

Plato: You know I do.

Xanthippe: But would you also say he is wrong in treating people as interchangeable parts in the city?

Plato: Yes, because my experts are unique and cannot be replaced by common people.

Xanthippe: But the others, the cud-chewing members of the common herd?

Plato; Oh yes, they are more or less the same.

Xanthippe: Even though some are strong, others weak, some are handsome others ugly, some are rich and others poor...?

Those are trivial differences.

Xanthippe: ...though some are neighbors, while others live in the Peiraeus.

--A geographical accident--

Some are cousins, others unrelated...

--Another accident: All that matters is whether they are good or not.

Xanthippe: And you would say only the experts are good?

Plato: Yes, of course, because they have reasoned their way to the basic principles of virtue. The rest, even the best of them, do not think, and so, while they may appear to be virtuous, they are only accidentally good out of habit or fear. True goodness can only come from the process of sifting good and evil that we are now engaged in.

Xanthippe: So you would admit that I might be good?

Plato: I suppose so.

Xanthippe: And I might even become an expert, suppose I could have started my education early enough.

Plato: Yes, you might indeed.

Socrates: Good grief, Plato, what's next? Running Xanthippe for strategos?

Xanthippe: I'm flattered, my young champion, but that is not my point. If neither sex nor age, beauty nor strength nor kinship matter, why should citizenship matter?

Plato: It should not.

X: Then there is no reason why our experts should not also rule, say, Megara--the Megarians are such troublesome neighbors..?

Pl: None indeed.

X: Or Thebes?

Pl: Why not?

X: Or Sparta or the Ionians or the Persians or even the yellow-skinned silk-makers who are said to live on the other side of the earth?

Pl. Perhaps not, but there would be practical problems. The experts couldn't be everywhere at the same time or know all the different languagesa or understand the different locales. You know Hippocrates claims that different climates produce different temperaments and different diseases.

X: But all those obstacles could be overcome.

P: How?

X: For one thing, the experts have an army and they could force everyone to speak Attic Greek and adopt our customs. Then, too, they could appoint junior experts in every place, apprentices who would be loyal because some day they would hope to become senior experts and rule the world.

P: That would help of course, but there would still be the problem of communication. If the experts were in Athens, it would take weeks to get the news from Susa or Carthage.

X: But, since we are only dreaming--and a pretty ugly dream it is too--we could imagine that the experts had a flock of winged messengers--little Hermeses--flitting back and forth.

P: Yes, but how would our experts sift through and arrange all the bits of information?

X: You're a clever boy, Plato. You could create your own mechanical Zeus, who would know all the things you put into " the tablets of his diaphragm," and he would sort and pull out everything you needed, whenever you asked him a question.

P: You're a genius. With this SuperZeus and flocks of little Hermeses, why a very few people could rule the entire world.

Xanthippe: That, Socrates, is what I was getting at by by reverse--what did you call it?

Socrates: Extrapolation, but what is this "what" you are speaking of?

Xanthippe: Do you really want to live in a world made in the image of Plato and run by his mirror-images. We should all be slaves or those mechanical servants that waited on King Alcinous in Phaeacia. Surely, you remember the Odyssey?

BE CONTINUED

**The story of Pasion is true, but it takes place in the next century.

*** To be honest, Plato was only 9 when Pheidippides was sent to study with Socrates, that is, when Aristophanes put on the Clouds .

“Alcibiades,” said Socrates. “Perhaps you can solve our conundrum.”

“Certainly. Always glad to pull your head down from the clouds.”

“We’ve been discussing the struggling cartmakers, whether they should be bailed out or left to fail.”

“Just as I thought, another foolish Socratic blather session. Even now, I am working on plans to save not only the cartmakers, but to defeat Sparta for good and to make Athens the greatest power the world has ever seen, the indispensable polis.”

“And you thought Socrates’ head was in the clouds,” Xanthippe said.

“Never mind her,” Socrates said. “Go on.”

“All right,” Alcibiades said. “As you know, our war on Spartan terror has gotten bogged down. So, we change the front of the war with an expedition to Sicily. Among other Athenian industries helped, the cartmakers will be hired to make the carts used by the invasion army. After our swift victory, they will get an exclusive cart franchise on Sicily. And after Sicily falls, Sparta will fall within months, leading to further franchise opportunities in Lakedaimon. The whole world is hungering as much for Athenian carts as for Athenian democracy.”

“Excuse me for departing from the politeness of philosophical discourse, but your idea is so stupid until now I thought something like that could only be dreamed up by a Macedonian.”

“Socrates! I should thrash you. But you are old and a veteran, so I shall desist. After our great triumph, I shall return, we shall drink wine, and I shall explain how victory was achieved.”

“Excuse a housewife’s question,” Xanthippe said.

“Certainly,” Alcibiades said.

Glancing at Socrates, she said, “Not everybody has to put up with a moocher, but my friends say they’re having problems now making ends meet, what with taxes so high. We just can’t afford more taxes to pay the war.”

“My dear lady, no new taxes will be needed. For one thing, by purchasing more carts for our army, the cartmakers will spread that money around Athens, which will boost the economy and so increase tax revenues. We’re also borrowing from future production at the silver mines. And we’ll mix a little nickel into the silver coins to multiply the number of coins owned by the polis.”

“Excuse me,” Socrates said. “But isn’t diluting the value of the coinage cheating the people who use it?”

“Socrates. You and your convoluted morality. Remember your geometry. If you double the sides of a triangle, does it then have six sides?”

“No, three still.”

“It’s the new household management – oikonomia – applied to the state by a philosopher named Keynesides.”

“Never heard of him.”

“You will,” Alcibiades said and walked off.