Good King Dagobert

It's about an anecdote from the life of Dagobert the first, a Frankish king who reigned in the 7th century. The way it's written here is an approximate translation from Catalan. If someone wants to give me sources to investigate more, thank God.<br><br>The anecdote has been attributed to many characters throughout history, which is why it's impossible to verify. But I want to tell you the story as I heard it and the reflection it made me on the history of my time.<br><br>**Good King Dagobert**<br><br>\n<br><br>One day, Good King Dagobert wanted to travel incognito through the field, to know what his vassals were doing. Arriving at a somewhat neglected farm, he asked the owner if he could eat, and the owner, after thinking for a moment, said: "If you want, you can eat. But I have to warn you that at home, we are very poor. So poor that we only have an egg. But I am going to cook it, and we will eat it". And he went into the kitchen and cooked the egg and they ate it.<br><br>\n<br><br>The King said "But how is it that you didn't cut the egg in half, so that we both have half an egg?" And the farmer replied: "Because I am so poor that I have to eat a whole egg".<br><br>\n<br><br>\---<br><br>\n<br><br>\---<br><br>\n<br><br>I've been thinking about this story a lot lately, because it seems to me that it illustrates very well a recurring behaviour of our societies. A concentration of wealth in a small group of people, hungry for power. We live in societies where we let fortunes be built on the backs of those who suffer the most, and who are generally also the ones who work the hardest. A farmer who has nothing to eat, has to eat a whole egg. An oil tycoon who has never been hungry in his life hoards his wealth with an endless appetite. And the system allows him to do so, because he is a relevant figure in the system. He has more power, more influence and more ability to hoard wealth. **And that makes him even more powerful.**<br><br>I don't know what concentration of wealth there is in our societies today, but it is clear that wealth accumulates in a small group of people, and that this is becoming more and more unequal. We live in a society where the people with the most power are the ones who have the most wealth, and who accumulate more wealth from that power. **It is a spiral.**<br><br>For Dagobert's farmer, his poverty is a source of misery. For an oil tycoon, his wealth is a source of power. And that's why he hoards it. He will always seek to accumulate more wealth, because that's his only source of power. He has no other ambition, he has no other value. *His only value is accumulating wealth.* And so he accumulates wealth, hungry for power, and everything else that happens to him is secondary.<br><br>We live in a society where wealth is what gives you power, and where hoarding wealth is the only way to accumulate it today. And I wonder, where will it take us? What will happen? Will we ever talk about wealth in a different way? Will we ever imagine a society that values something else? Or will we continue to concentrate wealth in a small group of people, no matter how hungry and miserable it leaves the majority?