A Three-Legged Stool
INT. EDM OFFICE BLDG — MORNING
BERT: Elder millenial, pragmatic socialist-libertarian.
ELLA: Gen-Z pro-market builder with an empathetic streak.
Scene: Two neighbouring cubicles under the humming flourescent lights
BERT
I just don’t see how we can count on the private sector alone to fix things like affordability and poverty, Ella. They just don’t have the tools.
ELLA
Receipts say otherwise, Bert. People voluntarily trading value for value have pulled way more humans out of poverty than any five-year bureaucratic master plan. Top-down planning leads to bread lines. Free enterprise gets you abundance you don’t even think twice about.
BERT
Sure, right before it gives you child labor and poisoned rivers. Capitalism doesn’t have a cleaner human-rights record than the ballot box. Left on their own, the market sprints straight to the bottom until organized labor grabs it by the collar and pins it to the wall.
ELLA
You’re confusing the disease with the symptom, Bert. The “race to the bottom” happens when incumbents buy off lawmakers and hide behind regulations they wrote. Drop the corporate bailouts and red-tape moats, and companies actually have to deliver, not just lobby.
BERT — soft chuckle
But where’s the profit margin in a community league, Ella, or the emergency shelter? Tell me who’s monetizing the volunteers setting up soup kitchens and coaching youth soccer in the freezing cold. You can’t make human empathy pay a dividend.
ELLA — tilts her head, leaning in
Why do you assume money is the only payoff that counts? Volunteering is an individual choice. It’s actual autonomy in action. You don’t need an official permit or tax mandate to show up for your neighborhood — you just need the freedom and the bandwidth to do it.
BERT
And when one guy buys up all the ‘bandwidth’’? Because they do. Power gathers power. The market doesn’t level the field; it concentrates it. You end up with kings in boardrooms instead of castles.
ELLA
Only if people keep handing them the bag. In a market where you can actually build alternatives, today’s monopoly is tomorrow’s cautionary tale.
BERT
Tell that to Google. Tell that to Apple. We call it “enshittification” for a reason — the products degrade, the prices climb, and people stay locked in because where else are they going to go? The exits are gated.
ELLA
Complacency is an open door. The second a giant stops caring about users, somebody in a garage is already figuring out how to eat their lunch. Unless, surprise, the giant lobbies city hall or DC to make building that alternative illegal.
(BEAT)
BERT — takes a slow breath
Look, Ella. Your theory is clean on paper. But we don’t live on paper. Some people are born sick. Some can’t run the race. Power accumulates not because of policy, but because of human nature. Gold buys soldiers; soldiers take land; land buys bigger armies.
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ELLA — earnestly
Look, I get that. Real talk: any system that pretends everyone starts from the same spot, or that anyone who falls behind just didn’t hustle enough, is broken. People need dignity, period. My only question has always been: how do we protect that without handing the keys to an all-powerful state?
BERT
Then stop trying to make one tool do three jobs. Think of a stool.
ELLA
A stool?
BERT
A stool. One leg — a monopod — you can balance on it for a few minutes while you milk a cow, but you’re fighting gravity every second. That’s pure individualism. Add a second leg — state bureaucracy — and it’s even worse, rocking back and forth until it dumps you on the floor.
Bert sketches three points in the air.
BERT (CONT’D)
You need the third leg. Leg one: the private market for innovation and drive. Leg two: the public sector for the rule of law and boundaries. And leg three: civil society. The volunteers. The community leagues. The mutual aid. With three legs, you have stability. You don’t fight the forces anymore — you actually build something on top.
(BEAT)
ELLA
…Voluntary action. Real mutual support without someone forcing your hand.
BERT
Exactly. Not more control — discipline. The community stepping in where both the boardroom and the state fail.
ELLA — half-grin
That’s not bad… You know, Bert… if you want anyone on my side to actually hear you, that’s how you pitch it. Don’t sell it as a state safety net. Pitch it as bottom-up autonomy. Real people choosing to organize and solve their own problems without waiting on a politician or a corporation. That’s pure initiative.
BERT
So explain that the ultimate expression of freedom isn’t the stock ticker, It’s the commons?
ELLA
It’s people having the agency to fix their own world without getting pushed around. Call it whatever you want — as long as nobody’s forcing it.
Bert leans back, satisfied. Ella taps the table with a nod.
BERT
Fair enough, Ella.
ELLA
Fair enough, Bert.
