Avoiding Soviet Breadlines
Introduction
Every functioning society depends on a simple, uncomfortable fact: someone has to create value before it can be shared.
We all know this, and yet modern culture treats it as impolite to say aloud. We argue about what to do about the gap between “have” and “have not” because we have stopped asking where value comes from.
This essay is not a pitch for another social project, nor an argument against big government. It is an argument for clarity. When a society loses clarity about the source of the resources government services require, it begins—unintentionally but inevitably—to punish the very people who make those services possible. And punished behaviors inevitably cease.
Creation vs. Allocation: Ordering Reality
There are two kinds of power at work in every civilization:
Generative power, which creates new value.
Allocative power, which distributes existing value.
Both matter. But they are not equal — and they are not interchangeable.
Allocative power can only exist after generative power has done its work. You cannot distribute what has not first been created. This is not ideology; it is arithmetic.
Creation is the act of turning raw reality into usable value. Examples include:
Transforming materials into tools.
Mitigating risk to create stability.
Leveraging effort into abundance.
Bringing order to chaos.
Allocation, by contrast, is derivative. It organizes, regulates, and redistributes what already exists. Necessary, yes — but downstream.
Trouble begins when downstream functions are mistaken for upstream ones.
How Builders Lose Moral Status
The work of folks in the “allocative power” is generally invisible or uninteresting to folks working in “generative power”. The problem, of course, is disinterest in government does not affect one’s tax liability. So, the builders of the world oftentimes just try to out-power the drag with more of the same. That is, they get hit with a huge tax bill, they get pissed off for a little while, then figure “I’ll just earn 10X on this next project” and generally continue to ignore where all those resources go or how they are used.
On the other hand, the allocators have all the time and energy in the world to build veneration in “civic achievements” as if they created the value they shunted to their pet project.
We celebrate outcomes but ignore origins. We praise systems but forget the people who built them. We venerate management, administration, and narrative control — while quietly treating builders as interchangeable inputs.
Creators are not just founders or inventors. They include:
Tradesmen who improve methods on the job show creativity.
Entrepreneurs who risk everything so others can have stable jobs are clearly creators.
Parents who build disciplined households create where it counts more.
Engineers, farmers, machinists, and teachers make the world more capable tomorrow than it was yesterday.
Creation is burden-bearing with imagination. It always involves risk, sacrifice, and delayed reward.
A society that fails to honor this work will eventually find fewer people willing to do it.
When Virtue Forgets Its Source
This becomes catastrophic over time because redistribution that forgets creation slowly destroys the supply it takes for granted.
This does not happen because people are evil. It happens because incentives matter, signals matter, and exhaustion is real. It happens because punished behaviors inevitably cease.
The celebration of creators is needed not just because it’s been absent for so long, but to balance the natural vilification creators come to expect. First off, anything once idolized will later be vilified. Creation is supremely admirable, and admiration left to spoil is called “player hating” on the street. Similarly, it’s easy to see the result of work while disregarding the pain over time of that work. Viewed from the outside, the fruits of labor don’t imply the pains of labor.
Additionally, allocators often build their empires by fomenting a victim mentality in voters: if your problems are someone else’s fault, a candidate can solve them by legislating that person somehow (generally taxing them). “It’s not fair that so-and-so drives a Porsche, and you have to ride the bus so they should pay more.” When creators are treated as suspects:
Capable people disengage.
Innovation slows.
Risk-takers go extinct.
Resentment replaces generosity.
Ironically, the people most harmed by this dynamic are often those whom redistribution is meant to help. Without abundant creation, compassion feels unaffordable. Scarcity breeds conflict. Entitlement replaces gratitude.
Care must edify the capable, or it collapses under its own weight. Taking care of those in need is deeply human and deeply good — until the relationship quietly inverts, and producers begin to experience themselves less as creators and more as slaves.
When that happens, the most common response is not revolt but withdrawal. Almost no builders storm the gates. Many simply say, “Forget it,” and disengage — working less, risking less, caring less. This impulse is not new. It has appeared repeatedly in sick societies, and it was memorably dramatized in the mid-20th century, albeit with more venom than wisdom, in Atlas Shrugged.
The language in that book is unnecessarily harsh. But the behavior it described was real then and remains real now. When creators quietly quit, it is not the powerful who suffer most. Producers can usually cover their own needs after withdrawing. The poor cannot. They are left downstream of a shrinking surplus they did not create and cannot replace.
Honor Is a Signal
Who we publicly honor matters more than we admit.
Naming buildings, airports, institutions, and awards is not symbolic fluff — it is moral instruction. It tells the next generation what behaviors are worthy of sacrifice.
A culture that primarily honors allocators will produce more allocators.
A culture that honors creators will produce more creation.
This is not about eliminating administration. It is about right-sizing reverence.
The Case, Simply Stated
If we want durable prosperity, sustainable compassion, social trust, and long-term stability, then we must once again celebrate where value comes from.
The brutal truth—one we’d be wise to soften—is that when creators work as allocators, it generally works well for a season (they get bored though), and when allocators try to work as creators it’s a disaster (every communist country in history). Saying “they need us more than we need them” is mean and frankly untrue. Everyone has a job they are born to do, and allocation is necessary. Entropy plays itself out in societies by huge tumors growing in the allocation sector because the market doesn’t kill off suboptimal ideas there like it does in the generative sector.
A society that forgets where its value comes from will eventually discover what life feels like without much of it.