Aesop told of a farmer who discovered that one of his geese laid a golden egg each morning. At first, he could hardly believe his fortune. Every day brought him a new treasure. But soon his greed outgrew his patience. He began to imagine how rich he would become if he could get all the gold at once. In a fit of impatience, he killed the goose to open it and collect all the eggs inside—only to find nothing. The bird was gone, and so was the source of his wealth.
Aesop’s moral is simple enough for a child to grasp: impatience and greed destroy prosperity. But the story also contains a deeper principle about economic and moral order—prosperity flows from production, not plunder. When a society consumes its sources of wealth faster than it replenishes them, it too kills its golden goose.
Capitalism as the Modern Goose
For roughly two centuries, free enterprise has been the golden goose of the modern world. From the Industrial Revolution onward, capitalism lifted billions out of poverty. It rewarded initiative, innovation, and thrift—traits that are moral as well as practical. The very comforts that even socialists now take for granted—electricity, antibiotics, refrigeration, cell phones—were all produced by the dynamism of free exchange, competition, and property rights.
Neo-Marxists like to sneer at this history, calling capitalism exploitative or “late stage.” Yet, every country that has throttled capitalism in the name of equality has ended up throttling prosperity. Venezuela was once the richest nation in Latin America. When its leaders decided to redistribute rather than produce, their people wound up rummaging through garbage for food. The Soviet Union promised to outproduce the West but wound up depending on grain imports from the “decadent capitalists” it despised.
Socialism always promises fairness but delivers scarcity, because it misunderstands where wealth comes from. It assumes that wealth is a fixed pile to be divided, rather than a stream that must be constantly renewed through productive work and voluntary exchange. When government seizes or centrally controls that process, innovation dies, motivation shrinks, and infrastructure decays.
The Psychology of the Socialist Farmer
The socialist politician resembles Aesop’s farmer—grasping, impatient, and blind to long-term consequence. He sees the wealth produced by free citizens and assumes that by redistributing it, he can make society more “fair.” But just as the farmer misunderstood where his gold came from, the socialist misunderstands how wealth is generated.
Instead of protecting the freedom that allows individuals to create, he taxes, regulates, and punishes success. He imagines that the golden eggs can be legislated into existence, that prosperity will continue even when he strangles the productive class. When the economy slows, he blames “greedy corporations,” “systemic racism,” or “market failure.” Never once does he suspect that his own knife is at the goose’s throat.
Neo-Marxists compound the folly by moralizing envy. They preach that inequality itself is a form of oppression, ignoring that differences in income often reflect differences in effort, risk, or talent. In their zeal for “equity,” they elevate resentment to a civic virtue. Aesop would recognize this as the moment the farmer’s covetous heart turns murderous.
Infrastructure: The Hidden Goose
A healthy economy depends not only on capital and labor but on infrastructure—roads, power grids, communication networks, and institutions of trust. These are the quiet geese that lay golden eggs daily. Under socialist regimes, they are the first to suffer.
To maintain appearances, socialist governments often cannibalize infrastructure. They raid pension funds, defer maintenance, and hide shortages behind propaganda. In the Soviet bloc, factories kept producing on paper while machinery rusted in reality. Cuba keeps its 1950s cars running not from nostalgia but from necessity; decades of central planning starved the country of new production.
Even mild Western socialism works the same way, just more slowly. When governments overpromise welfare and under-incentivize work, they must draw on accumulated capital—roads built by previous generations, technology developed by private innovators, moral habits formed under older virtues. Eventually, these reserves deplete. Bridges collapse, public schools fail, and national debt balloons. The goose wheezes, but politicians still pose for cameras, boasting of their “compassion.”
How Neo-Marxists Hide the Decay
Authoritarian socialism hides its failures through censorship and fear. Democratic socialism hides them through bureaucracy and distraction. In both cases, the trick is to delay recognition of decline.
They rename deficits as “investments,” inflation as “greedflation,” and dependency as “justice.” When productivity drops, they raise taxes to “fund essential services.” When businesses relocate to freer economies, they denounce “outsourcing.” Each policy slices a bit more from the goose, but the rhetoric soothes the public into thinking they are gaining moral virtue in exchange for economic loss.
In modern Western democracies, the propaganda is subtler. Neo-Marxists colonize cultural institutions—universities, media, entertainment—and redefine moral virtue as conformity to their ideology. They portray capitalism as oppressive and socialism as liberation, though no socialist economy has ever liberated its citizens from poverty.
The technique is psychological rather than physical coercion. By controlling language, they can recast envy as compassion, and failure as fairness. It is the moral equivalent of painting the barn after it burns down.
Capitalism’s Moral Foundation
The left caricatures capitalism as greed institutionalized. In truth, capitalism channels self-interest into mutual benefit. It is not a moral free-for-all; it depends on honesty, trust, and respect for property. These are fruits of a moral soil Christianity helped cultivate. When Reformation-era Protestants taught the dignity of labor and the stewardship of resources, they fertilized the field from which capitalism grew.
In contrast, socialism promises moral purity without moral effort. It abolishes personal responsibility by collectivizing it. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” sounds generous until you realize that someone must decide what your abilities and needs are. That someone is the State—and the State never shares its power willingly.
When government becomes the arbiter of fairness, it becomes the master of all. The productive citizen becomes a servant, working not for his family, church, or community, but for an abstraction called “the people.” The irony is brutal: socialism abolishes private greed only to enthrone public greed.
The Missing Dimension: God’s Sovereignty, Contentment, and Work as Worship
What the Neo-Marxist never grasps is that human economics is not merely material but moral and spiritual. Scripture insists that wealth and poverty alike fall under God’s providence. As Moses told Israel, “You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18, ESV). The biblical worldview begins not with envy but with submission—recognizing that God is sovereign over our circumstances and that He distributes gifts according to His wise purposes.
The believer’s response to this sovereignty is gratitude, not resentment. The Apostle Paul, who knew both plenty and want, declared, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Philippians 4:11). This contentment is not laziness; it is freedom from the slavery of envy. The Christian can labor diligently without bitterness because he works not for human approval but as service to God. As Paul also wrote, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Colossians 3:23).
This insight forms the heart of the Protestant work ethic—the conviction that all honest labor, however humble, is an act of worship. Work is not a curse but a calling. Martin Luther taught that a milkmaid milking cows and a preacher preaching sermons both glorify God if done in faith and obedience. Out of this theology grew an economy marked by responsibility, thrift, and innovation. Prosperity was never the ultimate goal but a byproduct of faithful stewardship.
Neo-Marxism, by contrast, severs economics from morality. It views labor as drudgery, property as theft, and inequality as injustice. It cannot comprehend that a man might work not merely for bread but for the glory of God, or that voluntary generosity springs more readily from thankful hearts than from coerced redistribution. When the State attempts to manufacture equality, it erases gratitude and replaces it with grievance.
A society that honors divine sovereignty will see work as sacred and possessions as entrusted gifts. A society that denies it will see only power and envy. The first multiplies blessings; the second consumes them. That missing dimension—faith in God’s ordering of human life—is why Marxist economics always collapses into bitterness and decay.
The Modern Goose’s Struggle
Look at nations today flirting with socialism: Argentina, South Africa, even parts of Western Europe and the United States. They ride on the residual wealth of earlier generations, but their leaders treat the national treasury like Aesop’s farmer treated his goose.
In the U.S., the federal debt exceeds $34 trillion. Entitlement programs are unfunded promises. Energy infrastructure is being dismantled in pursuit of green utopianism. Progressive cities defund police and subsidize homelessness, then act baffled when law-abiding citizens flee. The ruling class blames “inequality” while expanding bureaucracies that produce nothing but paperwork.
Meanwhile, the genuine producers—farmers, entrepreneurs, engineers, small business owners—are taxed, scolded, and regulated into exhaustion. They are told that success is privilege, not diligence. The golden eggs of productivity shrink in size and frequency, and the politicians insist the solution is to cut the goose open further.
The Hidden Cost of Killing the Goose
When an economy declines, the damage is not merely financial. It corrodes character. Prosperity requires virtues—thrift, patience, trust, foresight. Socialism discourages all of these. It trains citizens to look upward for permission rather than inward for initiative. It tells them that dependency is a right and gratitude is unnecessary.
Over time, people forget how to create. The spiritual energy that drives innovation—the desire to improve life for one’s family, the pride of craftsmanship, the freedom to risk failure—atrophies. Citizens become clients. The State becomes a parent, a warden, and finally, a gravekeeper.
This decay can persist for decades, camouflaged by debt and imported goods. But the reckoning always comes. When the Soviet Union fell, its citizens discovered that entire industries existed only on paper. When Venezuela’s oil revenues collapsed, the supposed workers’ paradise had no workers and no paradise.
The Path Back to Prosperity
Aesop’s fable ends in tragedy, but nations can still recover. The remedy is not complicated: restore the goose’s health by protecting the conditions that let it thrive. That means defending private property, limiting government power, encouraging enterprise, and upholding moral virtues that reward work over envy.
Neo-Marxists will howl that this is selfish or outdated. But true charity cannot exist without voluntary generosity, and voluntary generosity depends on having something to give. A society that punishes production destroys the very abundance it needs to help the poor.
Freedom and responsibility are twins. The more one grows, the more the other must as well. If we want golden eggs, we must honor the goose—not worship it, but guard it from those who would dissect it for political gain.
The Moral Lesson for Our Age
Aesop’s farmer was foolish, but he was at least honest in his greed. The modern socialist cloaks greed in righteousness. He claims to act for the poor while coveting the rich. He destroys prosperity while congratulating himself for his compassion.
The Christian tradition offers a better balance: stewardship, not exploitation; generosity, not coercion. God’s moral order does not bless envy or theft, even when baptized in social language. “You shall not covet” and “You shall not steal” are not suspended when a politician claims to act for justice.
If we want enduring prosperity, we must recover gratitude for the system that—imperfect though it is—has blessed millions. The market economy, disciplined by moral law, remains the best engine for both wealth and freedom. The goose still lives, though wounded. Whether it continues to lay golden eggs depends on whether we protect it or let the ideologues carve it open again.
Closing Reflection
Aesop’s tale is ancient, but its wisdom is ageless. Every generation faces the same temptation: to consume the fruits of freedom faster than they can grow. Neo-Marxists, in their fury against capitalism, are simply reenacting that old tragedy on a global scale.
The question is whether we have learned enough from history to refuse the knife. The golden eggs of innovation, prosperity, and liberty are fragile things, easily lost and hard to regain.
As long as we remember where they come from—human creativity under freedom, not coercion—there is hope that the goose will live to lay again.
S.D.G.,
Robert Sparkman
MMXXV
rob@christiannewsjunkie.com
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