The Captain: You see, it's... it's no good, Montag. We've all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal. --
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
" He [Chesterton] suggests a Christian system would involve every family having enough property to support themselves, but not much more."
Well, I like a great deal of what Chesterton said, but I do not consider myself obliged to slavishly and unquestioningly go along with every particular thing he ever thought or said.
Who, exactly -- what commissar or "czar" or "people's committee" will decide for us -- for every family (or individual) -- how much we need -- how much is "enough" -- to support ourselves? Who will enforce this equality, and how?
I sincerely believe that I myself have special and specialized needs in housing, clothing, equipment, and transportation, which no elected official or appointed bureaucrat could ever anticipate, and which I doubt more than a few hundred members of the human race could even begin to understand. It would cost a lot too. If someone says I ask too much, I reply, "Fine, but without what I need to work with -- to do the work I was put here for -- it will not be done. At least not by me. As Gandalf said when implored to start a fire during the blizzard on Mt. Caradhras, 'I cannot burn snow. I must have something to work with.' "
DWM
"It is when we try to grapple with another man's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun." -- Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim(1899?)