Intermediaries

Tiến asks the old professor:

"Professor, I'm honored that you are supervising my doctoral project. I'll do my best to live up to your kindness and to honour the time, effort and reputation you are putting into my work. Professor, I want to do my project on the world's wealthiest billionaires, to see whether they have anything in common that could be drawn out as a rule."

The old professor, with thick glasses, says:

"At the moment Jeff Bezos is the richest billionaire in the world, with a total fortune estimated at about 150 billion dollars. Bill Gates is second with 95.3 billion. See if these two have anything in common."

"Professor, Jeff Bezos is an intermediary who takes goods and resells them, but his system is formidable. Bill Gates has Microsoft, which makes software that sells strongly all over the world. I can't find anything in common."

"They do have something in common. Jeff Bezos is a middleman selling for others, and Bill Gates sells his own product. The Vietnamese have a saying: without trade, no wealth."

"Professor, I know the saying, but it seems so unkind. Producers work very hard but earn little, while merchants just pass goods along and take a huge profit."

"I used to think like you. Only after studying for years did I understand. Producing is hard work but not difficult. Running around to find buyers is what is difficult. Production needs effort and materials, but finding buyers needs luck. Luck is the hard part. Successful merchants are all lucky people. I have not studied religion, so I don't know what lies behind luck, but luck lies outside academic knowledge. The merchants' valuable contribution is that they connect producers with consumers so the economy runs. Without them, the economy would collapse."

Middlemen who connect people to each other do a great service. They make a society united. The different peoples within a country need to unite. The different religions within a country need to unite. A seller needs to connect with a buyer. A composer needs a singer to bring the work to the public's ear. A writer needs bookshops to put books before everyone.

Many fine things need middlemen to carry them to countless other minds. Moral teachings, philosophies, good speeches, a sound policy all need messengers to carry them to every corner of life. Someone who volunteers to be the middleman who brings good to everyone sometimes gains even greater merit than the source that created that good.

Whenever we have the chance, let us volunteer to be the connector: so that people love each other, so that groups unite, so that work reaches the worker, so that comfort reaches the suffering, so that those in need have enough to live on, so that knowledge reaches the eager learner, so that morality reaches the bewildered, so that light reaches those in darkness.