There was once a country where everyone was a thief.

At night each inhabitant went out armed with a crowbar and a lantern, and broke into a neighbour’s house. On returning at dawn, loaded down with booty, he would find that his own house had been burgled as well.

And so everyone lived in harmony, and no one was badly off–one person robbed another, and that one robbed the next, and so it went on until you reached the last person, who was robbing the first. In this country, business was synonymous with fraud, whether you were buying or selling. The government was a criminal organization set up to steal from the people, while the people spent all their time cheating the government. So life went on its untroubled course, and the inhabitants were neither rich nor poor.