This gem turned up in the Ribbonfarm post Stone-Soup for the Capitalist’s Soul:
- Your rights to your wealth do not extend beyond your understanding of it.
- You are fair game for hustlers who understand your wealth better than you do.
- The role of the state is to limit the violence with which you can be hustled.
- If you are poor you have the right to hustle the rich within certain limits.
It's a take on the old stone-soup fable in which a hungry soldier returning from war asks an old woman for food and is denied. He then tells her he can make a magnificent soup using only a stone and hot water. The old woman is curious and asks him to show her.
Between tastes, he tells the woman the soup is coming along nicely; "however it would be even better if only they had a little <insert ingredient>". In this way he persuades her to part with more ingredients until he has prepared a great meal for them both.
Ultimately the soldier leaves and the old woman realises it's just a normal stone.
Venkatesh doesn't tell you what to do with his writing. It's probably best left as an exercise for the reader. Gotta have some skin in the game after all.