It took less than thirty seconds to pass a resolution requiring the disbursement of all funds collected in the recent taxation.

Whitlaw nodded and opened his desk drawer. He started counting coins. "Uh, we have a problem-there are forty-four of you in this class. But there are only thirty caseys here. If you'll remember, the former government spent eighteen caseys on an army."

Four people stood up to author the next resolution, requiring the return of funds paid to former members of the Imperial Guard. Whitlaw vetoed that. "Sorry. Doesn't that fall into the realm of confiscation? Remember the five-casey note I took unfairly? You just had a rebellion because you didn't want a government able to do that. Now you're setting up a new government to do exactly the same thing."

"But this is different-"

"No it isn't! Confiscation is confiscation! It doesn't matter who does the confiscating-the person still loses something!"

"But ... then how do we redress previous wrongs?"

"I don't know either. You're the government now. You tell me."

"So why can't we just take the money back?"

"Because the army was fairly paid. They did their job and they were paid a fair wage for what they did. You can't take that money away from them now because it's theirs."

"But you had no right to give it to them!"

"Yes, I did! I was the government!"

Hank Chelsea was standing then. "Wait a minute, sir! I think we all understand what you're trying to teach us. We have to find a fair way to do this, don't we?"

"If you can, you'll be a better man than I am. In the eleven years that I've been teaching this class, not one session has ever found a way that was both fair and legal to take money out of one person's pocket and put it into another's." He motioned for Hank to sit down. "Let me give you this to think about: a government-any government-is nothing more than a system for reapportioning wealth. It takes money from one group of people and gives it to another group of people. And when it happens that enough people decide that they don't like the way the wealth is being reapportioned, that's when that government will be replaced by another one more to the people's liking. As has happened here! But you cannot use the new government to redress all of the wrongs of the previous government-not without creating far more problems than you'll ever clean up. You'll end up with a government entirely concerned with past events and not present ones. That's a sure way to set yourself up to fail. If you're going to win at this game, you have to deal with circumstances the way they are, not the way they used to be or the way you'd like them to be. In other words, only operate on those events you have control over. That's the only way to produce results. The real question, then, is, what do you have control over? We'll probably spend the rest of the semester tackling that one. Right now, let's handle the immediate problem." He opened his desk drawer. "There are forty-four of you and only thirty caseys here. If you don't reimburse the six members of the Imperial Guard, you're still going to be eight caseys short. And one of you is going to be at least four caseys short because I took a fiver off him."

It was moved, seconded and approved to return four caseys to Geoff Miller to bring his loss into line with the rest of ours. This left the national treasury at twenty-six caseys. We were now short twelve caseys if we wanted to return the money equally.

One of the former members of the Imperial Guard stood up. "Here, I'll give back the extra two caseys that Whitlaw paid me. I don't think it's fair for me to keep it." He poked his buddy, who also stood up. "Yeah, me too." Two more former soldiers also chipped in then, but the last two just sat in the back of the room with their arms folded.

"We earned it fairly. We're entitled to it."

"Well," said Whitlaw, "that brings the national debt down to two caseys. Not bad. Now all you have to do is decide who gets the short straws."

"This isn't fair!" said Mariette again.

Whitlaw agreed with her. "You're beginning to see it. No matter how hard we try, the government cannot be fair to everybody. Cannot. The very best that it can do is treat everybody equally unfairly."

The immediate classroom problem was finally resolved when John Hubre realized that the casey isn't indivisible. Thirty-eight students, each of whom had paid one casey in taxation, were repaid ninety-four cents each. There was twenty-eight cents left over. Whitlaw started to pocket it, but Hank Chelsea said quickly, "Sorry-that's the national treasury. We'll have one of our own hold it, if you don't mind."

Whitlaw passed it over with a grin. "You're learning," he said.

"ALL RIGHT," said Whitlaw. "Obviously, there was a point to that little exercise. No, put your hands down. I'm just going to give you this straight out. There's no such thing as a government."

He looked around the room. "Point to it. Show me the government. Show me any government." He waved our hands down again. "Forget it. You can't. You can show me some buildings, and some people and some rules written down on paper, but you can't show me a government. Because there's no such thing in the physical universe. It's just something we made up. It exists only by our agreement that it does. You just proved that here. We agreed that we wanted some stuff managed and we agreed on some rules for how it should be managed. The agreements are the government. Nothing else.

"How big the government gets depends on how many agreements you make. If enough people agree, we'll build some buildings and hire some people to work in them and manage the agreements for us. Now, here's the question-how do you know if something is the business of the government or not?-that is, the business of the people we've hired to work in our buildings and manage our agreements for us. How do they know what to manage? What's the test?

"No-put your hand down. It's too simple. A person, place, or thing is in the jurisdiction of a government if it tests that government's agreements. If it doesn't, it isn't.

"The government doesn't have to manage the people who keep the agreements. They don't need managing. They're being responsible. It is the business of the government to manage those people who test the agreements. This is it. The whole of government consists of the art of managing people to keep the agreements-especially those who do the managing."

Whitlaw moved thoughtfully to the back of the room. He sounded as if he were speculating idly aloud. "Now ... management is decision-making, right? Anyone not see that? So, the question is-what are the guidelines by which the managers make their decisions? What is the meter-stick?" He looked around at us.

Marcie something-or-other: "The agreements, of course. The rules."

Whitlaw snorted. "Not bloody likely. The rules are just the context-the authorization for the decisions. In fact, the history of this nation is about men and women not following the rules. History is a list of who tested what agreements.

"Every time an agreement is tested, the person whose responsibility that agreement is, is also being tested. So, what does that person use for guidelines?-particularly when there are no guidelines! What is the source of that person's choice?" Whitlaw shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and turned slowly around, making sure we were all paying attention. When he spoke, his voice was low and quiet. "The truth is that ultimately every single choice ... is a reflection of the integrity of the individual making it."

"You might want to notice that-that everything we've done in this country, everything that we've accomplished-good or bad -in nearly two and a half centuries, has been done out of the integrity-or lack of integrity---of people like ourselves who are willing to make decisions and be responsible for them, especially when they know those decisions will be unpopular."